Bukowski…one of those great and terrible and brilliant and heart-breaking and triumphant figures that chose in his life to write…to write about what he saw, what he felt and what made him who he was and to write like no one had ever written before. When I was studying in school a couple of years ago I spent quite a bit of time reading Bukowski’s poetry, went to the movie “Born Into This” about his life and wrote a couple of papers, one of which I’ve reprinted below and the other, which was about how I saw him and Rumi as some kind of poetry Odd Couple, I’ll save for some other time. I even had a very powerful dream about him when I was at the Idylwild Poetry workshop where I felt his spirit daring me to crack open the “nice” me and let out the lion. Of course I wrote a poem about the experience, which is still waiting to be revised (which of course Bukowski would hate). Anyway, since I’ve been facilitating a workshop on him this week he’s been cruising around in my consciousness with all his intensity and inspiration, so I thought I’d plunk down this essay. If you want more info on him there are dozens of websites and most of them have quite a few of his poems posted. Google away.

Charles Bukowski was born in 1920 in Germany. He spent his childhood and the majority of his adult life in Los Angeles. He is somewhat of a cult figure in the Los Angeles poetic scene. His childhood was a “horror,” as he describes it, of brutal beatings and emotional deprivation. He turned early in life to alcohol for escape from the pain of his past. In the documentary on his life, Bukowski: Born Into This, he is queried on when he started writing poetry. He says that when he was 13 he picked up a pencil and just started writing. He discovered a way to have a voice, to express himself that no one could take away from him.

There is rawness in Bukowski’s poetry that can be crude, even brutal at times. He writes of the street, the bedroom, the bar and the racetrack. The people in his poems are whores, pimps, crazed poets, women who throw themselves at him, and always, himself. He never shies away from telling what he sees and how he sees it. He doesn’t make excuses for how he sees the world or the dysfunctional world that he inhabits. This is where he lives. This is what he knows.

When I first began to read Bukowski’s poems I had a difficult time getting through the harsh language he often uses, but as I read deeper into the collection I was able to let go of my judgments and hear the beauty underlying his work. It was a tremendous help for me to hear Bukowski read his poetry and see the interviews with him in the documentary. To know about his life and the circumstances and times through which he lived are instrumental (at least for me) in connecting with the essence of his poetry. He suffered greatly and for most of his life he struggled mightily with functioning in any kind of social or structured society. He himself said that the one thing the beatings taught him was to “do away with any pretenses.” This is seen clearly in his poetry and in the way he lived his life.

Bukowski was a prolific writer. He wrote over 45 books of poetry and prose. When reading this volume of poetry it was as if I was reading a history of Los Angeles spanning half a century. His poems are written in a style that is very prose-like, with few flourishes or nuances. You can read down the page as if a story is being told, with scenes, dialogue, drama and humor all packed into a page or two—like you’re reading a short story. One example of this is the poem, “my literary fly,” written on a very hot day when he is trying to write. This is the first stanza:

115 degrees
not even a turkey could be happy in this heat
but it beats burning at the stake,
and like my uncle once said
(when I asked him how things were going)
he said, well, I had breakfast, I had lunch and
I think I’m going to have
dinner;
well, that’s us Chinaskis,
we don’t ask for much and
we don’t get much,
except I have an awful good-looking girlfriend
who seems to accept my madness,
but still, it’s
115 degrees.

Bukowski shines a light on the everyday. He glorifies the weather, the words of his uncle, his girlfriend and, most significantly, how we human beings simply cope with the life that has been handed to us. This, I believe, is what drew so many of the rebellious young to his poetry in the ‘60’s & ‘70’s. He did not sugarcoat. He did not offer a philosophy. He did not say he had the “answer” to anything. He put his screwed up life out there on the page and laughed at it, screamed at it and cried over it. He said, as the title proclaims, that “what matters is how well you walk through the fire.”

There is a tremendous amount of heart in Bukowski’s poetry. Underneath his crusty, belligerent exterior is a man of great tenderness. He is ferocious in his desire to be real in a world where there is so much pretension and conformity. He understands the men and women who are down and out, on the streets, who do what they have to do to survive. He knows he is one step away from being one of them.

winter: 44th year

I am sad
like
a
dead angel

I am sad
like
porksalt

I am mad
like
a
dead angel

a woman has
told me
when things get bad
she’ll come and
bring me
lovely living
angels.

I phoned her
an hour ago
holding a
sharp knife
in my
left hand.

the phone service
said
they’d

leave the
message.

Through all the drinking, gambling and rage Bukowski goes on. His message is always one of hope. There may be much despair in the lives of the people he writes about, and in his own circumstances, but every day he rises from his bed and he writes. He gives of himself and he has the courage to put what he knows down on paper and send it out into the world to be heard, to be felt and to be a hand reaching out to those who are lost and confused in an overwhelming world, where their voices are rarely heard.

Poetry clearly saved Bukowski’s life and if not for writing he might have ended up a violent criminal or a derelict on the street. He fought the good fight and through his poetry he found his way. In the final poem of this collection, an older, wiser and softer Bukowski speaks directly to the reader in “roll the dice.”

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, it’s
the only good fight
there is.
(last 4 stanzas)

Bukowski brought a dynamic new voice to poetry at the time when it was sorely needed. He freed many poets to follow him to speak in their natural voices, to speak of what they knew (even if it wasn’t “pretty”) and to throw a good majority of the “rules” out the window. His disdain for pretenses gives his poetry a freshness and an honesty that grips the reader from the first word to the last.

In all the multitude of poems that Charles Bukowski wrote there is one constant; if a man such as he, who has been through such unspeakable pain, can do his laundry, sort mail at the post office for 15 years, and sit down at the typewriter to write poetry every day of the year, then there is hope, and a place in this world, for all of us.