Why Bukowski is My Poet Godfather

                                                                        (Corbis)

I think I found out about him through an email blast for some literary event. Oh wait, that event was the anniversary of his death, March 9th. So it hasn't even been a full year and I've read Women, Factotum and Bone Palace Ballet. 

Reading Factotum as your intro to Buk may be hard for some to stomach. I never even knew about Transgressive Fiction or dirty realism as a genre. It's not what you read in school and Buk would want it that way. He even thought that being too dirty for school was something that added street cred. 

I love the guy. I loved him the moment he talked about sex in excruciating detail, made it funny and then showed his soft side. I believe it was the hooker scene in Factotum. If you've read the book then you know about the really out of shape girl that gave him a psycho blow job. I'll leave it there for the kiddies.Ha

But he gave her a decent amount of cash, there are probably some dudes that would have cut out after a mess like that. Which showed that he respected the street and street rules. There was always a real human compassion this man displayed that put him above the stuffed necks this industry is often filled with.

Add to that: wit, charm, pointed observation and heartbreaking realism. My God, what's not to love? I'm currently reading Ham on Rye.

Also he has some of the most exciting plot-less novels out. I feel like they were journal entries. His poetry combined with his few novels detailed most of his life. We got to fully know this man. It's like a high caliber reality show/documentary in book form. Or something like that. Below is one of my most fav poems of his. The first time I read it, I cried.

For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.

Charles Bukowski

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-jane-with-all-the-love-i-had-which-was-not-e/