Charles Bukowski

The Daily News columnist feted earlier this year as The Bard of LA by the Huntington invokes both Charles Bukowski and Dylan Thomas and writes that, "I am pleased to enter my name today as a candidate for poet laureate of Los Angeles."

Under normal circumstances, the announcement would be made by the head of a committee constituted to promote its candidate for the job, but since I have no such committee, I am left to blow my own goat horn, which, as you well know, I have always done quite willingly.

Creation of the post was announced by our Big Burrito, the mayor, in order to get us little burritos thinking in terms of the artists and writers who live, work or drive through this vibrant City of Angles. I mean Angels.

Since I have already been designated as "The Bard of L.A." by no less an institution than the Huntington Library, I feel it is only a hop, skip and traipse away from possessing the whole enchilada....

To be L.A.'s poet laureate I would not have to be a drunk, but I would have to be graceful and articulate to promote the city's artistic community and to be of general good cheer as I read my work to schools and to various gatherings of poets where everyone whispered and gestured the way poets often do. Maybe that's why Bukowski and Thomas drank a lot. They never whispered and rarely gestured unless, in Bukowski's case, it was to punch someone in the face.

Al Martinez, bard of L.A.
Al Martinez exhibit opens at the Huntington
Huntington announces exhibit of Al Martinez work

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