There are truths you'll admit you know, and there are truths you'll only admit knowing to yourself after reading Bukowski's poetry. Charles Bukowski is a legend among poets, discovered on the West Coast reading in bars, and featured in the book Literary L.A. by Lionel Rolphe.
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire was published five years after Bukowski's death, and features previously uncollected works by him. These poems display a broad range of voices by Bukowski -- from the familiar gritty urbanist, to the very reflective well-studied writer that he could be.
A good example of the latter is the melancholic poem "some notes on Bach and Hayden," which I could probably spend this whole review discussing. It is a perfect example of how in love with life Bukowski is, but not just the pleasant or positive aspects of life, all of it. Here are a few lines to give you a taste of a side of Bukowski you may not have known existed:
maybe just 35 people
in a city of millions listening
as you are listening now,
looking at the walls,
smoking quietly,
not hating anything,
not wanting anything,
existing like mercury
you listen to a dead man's music
at 4:30 in the morning,
only he is not really dead
as the smoke from your cigarette curls up,
is not really dead,
and all is magic,
this good sound
in Los Angeles.
Most people, when you mention Bukowski, think of the angry vulgar baseness that gets the most recognition because of the life Bukowski lived, and because of the notoriety of the movie Barfly and his novel Pulp. But consider the romanticism displayed in these next two lines, also from the above poem:
may this night never see morning
as finally one night will not
Those are lines of poetry that should take their place in your memory alongside your quotable Auden and Shakespeare. That said, Bukowski does tend to sabotage the beauty in his poems with references to less pretty images. Consider that in the same poem I quote from above, the poet claims he is writing with pen and paper because "my typewriter at this hour would / scream like a raped bear." And later in the poem, as he laments the inevitable coming of morning and its "cars jammed on freeways, / faces as horrible as unflushed excreta".
If you've avoided Bukowski because you think his work will be too urban for you, avoid him no more. Bukowski exposes universal truths that may make you uncomfortable sometimes, but that will delight and surprise you with every turn of the page.
