Hank Was Here

An appreciation for Charles Bukowski and finding poetry in the ordinary.

I told my daughter that New Orleans is a city that lets people be themselves. “The Big Easy,” they call it. It is impossible to walk a block and not encounter some sort of unique character. Tourists, native borns, transplants. Nearly everyone says hello in some way. Everyone seems content to leave one another alone. People come and people go. There’s not another city that feels easy like this.

Someone here had the forethought to preserve this square of sidewalk outside a bar. It’s where Charles Bukowski carved a message in some wet concrete in 1955. It’s near a corner along Kerlerec Street on the edge of the French Quarter where Bukowski famously spent some of his roughest years carousing in the city.

If you don’t know Bukowski, you should start with the fact that almost 40 years ago, the travel writer Pico Iyer dubbed Bukowski “the poet laureate of America’s lowlife,” a moniker that has stuck with him ever since.

Lots of booze, broads, and brawls. Cigarettes and cynical anger. Hangovers and honest love. Finding beauty and meaning within the hard times.

“Hank Was Here 1955,” reads the inscription in the pavement.

Bukowski often referred to himself as “Hank.” It’s a nickname for his middle name, Henry — as in Charles Henry Bukowski.

As I made these photos of the sidewalk, I searched my brain for the lines to the second half of Bukowski’s poem “The Laughing Heart,” which had been, at one time, fixed in my head…

the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

— excerpt from “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski

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Those of you who know my photography have seen over the years that some of my favorite subjects are painters, custodians, and other laborers who are oblivious to my camera. I love how they are focused on the job, and how they seem to be lost deeply in the work. I find there is a certain dignity, and a great artistry, to their labor. Each one is creating their own personal masterpiece of some kind.

I never seek out such photos intentionally, but when I’m offered a chance to make such a photograph, I’ll take it.

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From the poet’s corner, I walked further uptown with my camera. I wanted to find a scene that captured the feel of New Orleans without falling into the common cliches…the brass bands, beignets, Mardi Gras masks, horse-drawn carriages, and tarot cards that make fodder for social media.

Above the busy street, I saw this scene:

Above Royal Street. New Orleans, LA. (2024).

Immediately, there was poetry. It was an everyday story, but told in a New Orleans way. So much color, so much light. And for as long as I stood there with my camera, she never looked up. Transcendent in her masterpiece.

I love the photo the way it is, but I cropped it down here for some detail…

I felt I could stay there all afternoon, and as I stood there once more the ghost of Charles Bukowski presented itself.

For me, perhaps Hank’s most perfect poem is “Nirvana.” It’s about a young man riding a passenger bus through North Carolina on a snowy day when it stops at a cafe. The young man notices things that are unnoticed by anyone else…how good the coffee is, how genuine the laugh of the dishwasher, how the tires sound in the snow as the bus drives away. The ordinary becomes extraordinary…

the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.

— excerpt from “Nirvana” by Charles Bukowski