Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac – Book Review

    Jack Kerouac is a perfect example of a writer going beyond the page. His work (or what I have read of it) is good, very good, but his life truly is an exceptional story that undeniably deserves to have been recorded in his guerrilla-style writing that is so iconically his own. I can not talk about On the Road without a little history lesson about the book, and the characters that surround it.

    In high school, my AP U.S History final was a presentation on the Beat Generation, and I am sad to say that I know an Ivy Leauger who was unaware of Mr. Kerouac and this influential change in writing. The Beats basically consist of a group of prigs in New York in the late forties through the early sixties that experimented with drugs, sexuality and renounced nuclear family values. These poets include Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. Kerouac includes all of these savants in his book under pseudonyms. However, it is Dean Moriarty, the real-life Neal Cassady, who steals the show in this autobiographical novel.

    Jack wrote allegedly wrote On the Road in the span of two weeks on a 120-page scroll (no indentations or paragraphs) so he wouldn’t have to waste time changing the paper in his typewriter (obviously high on speed). It took him years to edit it, but still, it is very impressive that he pooped out such a masterpiece in such a short duration of mental vigor. I will admit, I have mimicked these writing tactics, but have yet to write something as wonderfully entertaining as On the Road.

    There isn’t any plot. There is a story. I will admit, I can’t remember much, or any of it other than it was enjoyable to digest. Jack Kerouac received criticism from Truman Capote that he wasn’t writing, he was typing; that the whole book was just a stream of consciousness “vomited onto the page.” A part of me does not disagree. The other part of me doesn’t care. I am not a believer that writing, more importantly, fiction, has to be confined to only the imagined plot-line. Sometimes what is grounded in reality, “close to the bone” is still an exceptional work of art. I really did enjoy this book. It didn’t show off and was exactly what you might expect from a Columbia drop-out.

    I fell in love with Neal Cassady. Possibly one of the most maddening, tragic heroes I have ever had the experience of knowing through the page. There was no hiding who these people were – lost souls. And very young. For how prophetic the Beats claim to be, I never took away any nuggets of deep wisdom. Instead, there is a lot of manic rambling from Dean. It gets old, but it is also refreshing. It is what I think this whole culture was founded on. Superficial depth. I liked it goddamnit.

    85/100

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  • salivation

    I’d like to publicly apologize for a spider I killed tonight. Privately, I did a lot of other bad things today. I’m so shaken up about this homicide I don’t feel like writing. How do I live with myself? I want to be unloved. Die alone. A missing obituary in a town where nobody knew my name. Maybe I’m the one who hasn’t moved on. I look forward to quasi-communication with a skeleton. A new friend (a beautiful woman from Minnesota) told me that when we dream of those who have passed, they are “visiting” us. Let the ghosts go on haunting. There are so many rational things to worry about, but all I can think about is running into people who’ve left my life at a party. Unsure what to say, so we just ignore each other. They move on, and I just stay the same. I’d be happy to think I changed, but we all dream. A paranoid schizophrenic isn’t meant to be understood. That is why my best friend is a non-linear journal and a dope fiend. It would be nice to be remembered, but there are so many things I can’t forget. Music is a good equalizer. I’d hate to have my tastes. Hell, I can’t hide the tears any longer. Like an old game of hiding and seek, under a blanket with nothing on, when there was nothing to hide, you found me. The tears always came anyway. And I’d hitchhike across the country and leave behind all responsibility when everything left me behind time after time. I know, it isn’t easy to walk away.

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  • sorry

    I’m dripping wet. Cold shower #7. I’m in heaven. An unavoidable headache after five minutes of vigorous lovemaking. I’m shaking. Cold as Jack Frost. I’m lost and it’s my own damn fault. I laugh because on paper I am probably one of the most unsuccessful people I know when it comes to comparisons. TO COMPARE IS TO DESPAIR. But, I can’t even talk with my best friend without the phone call ending on some awkward note that he knows I’m a jack off (Even when I know I’m not, but he doesn’t and you don’t). I don’t know how I’ve been afforded such a self-beneficial degenerate lifestyle for as long as I’ve lived. The hardest job I’ve ever held was selling weenies down at the beach! But, (apart from some tragedies that make life worth living) I’m relatively happy. I am happy to be WHO I am, but not WHAT I am. A 23-year-old young man (who is not getting any younger) living with his parents, unemployed, clinging onto the illusion that I am a writer that will someday be recognized (when all my life I’ve been nothing but criticized), taking cold showers and abstaining from masturbating, dry, relatively unattractive (besides from men, who, sorry, need not apply) and what I imagine everyone would imagine as bitter. But, it could be so much worse. Goddamnit, I am happy. with myself, most days, not always, but often enough to only complain to my ragdoll occasionally. I can’t remember a time when I felt so good about myself and my prospects since I was class president (that sentence took a lot of practice). I don’t need the world, or you, to tell me who I am, what I am worth, why I write. I hate to say it, but I love writing more than everything, anyone, except maybe God (just because I have a healthy fear of balding). He cuts me breaks when I start internally screaming “I’m dead inside,” but sad or happy, I’ve found one thing that gives back to me regardless of how needy I am, ugly, unfaithful, bad at it, and weak. It heals me like love is meant to be, even when I hate it. And I love you. I love you, too. And I would have burned my first book for you. But, I never felt enough. Enough as in, equal. I needs a good hug. Sometimes I sits and I thinks, but most I just sits – Neal Cassady. I’ve fallen in love with a man in a book. I’ve fallen in love with the words and the way the world is described by a book. Your face is more beautiful. But words never age. Or if they do, like beauty, it is like a fine wine. And I don’t think anything gold can stay. If I was a child, I would run all the way home to you, but we must eventually move over for the things we always said were important. Piano. New York. Children. I can’t give it all up because of someone. I’m not that person, for you, or anyone. I AM that person. And you know I’ll never be strong enough to walk away from love once lived, saving up kisses for a rainy day. That’s all I want. That’s all we need. A hug and a kiss, but goddamnit I am happy being so much less than what everyone expected of me. It hurts so deep, but the difference is I see clearly. I don’t doubt the intelligence, pursuance of the arts, financial security, and every other possible way that everyone else towers over me, but…I forgot my point.

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  • recycle

    There are certain fads that suggest easy, medium, and hard mode. Although I fall into the “easy” category of the specific fad I am referring to, I have turned up the heat in other areas of my life, making me self assured that life is not going to be easy. The first and foremost change that I pray will get me out of my eucalyptus tree is cold showers. I am currently on cold shower #3 and I will let you know when that reign ends. Secondly, no sugar…or dessert. I have a bad habit of sneaking into the kitchen late at night when I can’t sleep, opening the pantry and gorging chocolate so I pass out on a full stomach. This has been the most noticeable difference in my livelihood. Since chocolate has caffeine, I would not get the desired sleep I needed and would often start my day a few hours later than I anticipated. Now, I wake up before the sun. And run. Run I do from now on. I don’t have a beach body, but more importantly, I am healthy. I think of where I was a year ago, and there is a very small difference in how well I am spiritually, but the difference is there, and because of this, I am different. I hate that I always try to push further, progress more than I would if I idly enjoyed life. It seems so easy for everybody, but me, I just don’t want to think of life as something that passively beat me. Perhaps it is the Aries in me. Thankfully, I am not doing this vindictively, and I doubt anybody has the time to notice me. It is a good fight, me vs. me. 100$ pay per view. I miss normalcy, even when I think of how unhappy it made me.

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  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce – Book Review

    When I first stumbled upon this delight, I intended to swallow the book in one sitting. Joyce is not light reading material meant for a Sunday afternoon or Saturday night. It is a JOY to read, but a workout for your reading muscles. I look forward to uncovering Joyce’s poetry because the language sings in a way that I haven’t experienced since Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, but with Joyce, I could follow the story, while with Woolf, I thought of as gibberish. And Gibberish this book is! But well written adolescent linear poetry at its finest.

    Margret Atwood suggests that poetry and literature come from two entirely separate parts of the brain. I believe poetry comes from the area that has to do introspection, while literature has to do with speech and dialect. There is extensive introspection in this autobiographical-fiction that only a young Irish Catholic himself could elucidate.

    Now, I will admit, having this book read to me aloud would either be a godsend or a migraine. It is poetry, designed for the page, with words popping out at you and sentences that demand to be reread ten to fifteen times just to get the surface of what they intend to mean. It has all sorts of hidden doors, ghosts in the closets, and secrets hiding within the juicy loins of this commendable work of art. He finished the first draft in 1904 (or 06) I believe, and it was published in 1914. Considering his famous opus, Ulysses which took him only 7 years to finish, this I believe was a passion project. A writer’s right of passage.

    “Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.” – D.H Lawrence.For some reason, I never felt that the human conflict of a young boy that Joyce was uncovering in his debut novel that was at all vulgar pulp. In fact, though he tittles with onanism, it is done with elegant wordplay that only made me want to imagine how he would have written about sex. Perhaps at the time, it was taboo topics but even when I felt uncomfortable, I loved it. I was more concerned by what time of the day it was in the book, or the hour of the character’s little discussions took place rather than the year it took place. The language is occasionally dated, but the theme and content are the same as today’s pubescent struggles.

    I felt as though I moved from a soldier to an artist in the same hero’s journey as Stephen Dedalus. The story follows Stephen through his childhood, through his teens in seminary or church, and then at college. None of the other characters are even close to as fleshed out as Stephen, but I could picture them all because I felt like I knew each one of them growing up. There is DEEP character development in this book. Stephen struggles with childhood right-and-wrong, religious piety, love, and the arts.

    Joyce’s cogent ideas and intellect will get the better of you more than once in this coming-of-age squib. It is a perfect example of why books are better than movies. You can not film these words. However, I just recently saw Citizen Kane, and the character development is just as effective and can leave the audience just as conflicted as this story.


    83/100

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Ben Bonkoske is the author of two novels, Spoon in the Road, and Carolina, Colorado, California. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Ten Zen by Ben, and Eleven Stories for 11:11. He lives in Chicago, where he likes to take walks.

B. A, M.A.T.