Carlos Bukowski | Foundation of poetry (2023)

Charles Bukowski was a prolific underground writer whose poetry and prose portrayed the depravity of urban life and the misfits of American society. A cult hero, Bukowski drew on experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using blunt language and violent and sexual imagery. While some critics found his style obnoxious, others claimed that Bukowski mocked the macho attitude through his routine dealings with sex, alcohol abuse, and violence. "Without trying to sound good, much less heroic, Bukowski writes with a factual truthfulness that distinguishes him from most other 'autobiographical' novelists and poets," commented Stephen KesslerSan Francisco Buchbesprechung,adding, "Firmly in the American tradition of the outsider, Bukowski writes uncompromisingly from society's ragged fringes." Michael Lallyvoice of the peopleHe explained that "Bukowski is... a phenomenon. He has established himself as a writer with a consistent and persistent style, based on what he projects as his "personality", the result of a hard and intense experience.

Bukowski was born in Germany and came to the United States at the age of two. His father believed in strict discipline and would often hit Bukowski for the slightest insult, an abuse Bukowski detailed in his coming-of-age autobiographical novel.Ham on Rye(1982). As a young child, Bukowski was also bullied by boys his own age and often shunned by girls because of his bad looks. “When Bukowski was 13,” Ciotti wrote, “one [of his friends] invited him to his father's basement and poured him his first glass of alcohol: 'It was magical,' Bukowski later wrote. 'Why didn't anyone tell me that?'"

In 1939, Bukowski began attending Los Angeles City College, dropping out when World War II broke out and moving to New York to become a writer. I spent the next few years writing, traveling, and collecting countless rejection letters. In 1946, Bukowski decided to give up his writing aspirations and embarked on a ten-year journey that took him across the country. Shortly before dying in Los Angeles, Bukowski began writing again, although he continued to drink and cultivate his reputation as a tireless poet. He began his career as a professional writer only at the age of 35 and, like other contemporaries, began publishing in underground newspapers, particularly local newspapers such asopen cityIt is inLos Angeles Free Press."Published by small underground publishers and small mimeographic magazines for a short time," described Jay Dougherty incontemporary novelists,"Bukowski became known in a way through word of mouth." “The protagonist of his largely autobiographical poems and stories is often a failed writer [Henry Chinaski] who hustles his time (and gets fired), side jobs, gets drunk and makes love. with a string of whores and whores,” Ciotti reported. "Otherwise he dates other losers: prostitutes, pimps, alcoholics, homeless people."

Bukowski wrote more than forty books of poetry, prose, and novels.Flower, fist and bestial lament(1959),Bukowski's first volume of poetry addresses the main interests and themes that drive many of his works, particularly "the sense of a desolate and desolate world," noted R.R. Cuscaden in thestranger.In addition to the devastation, Bukowski's free stanza addresses the absurdities of life, particularly in relation to death. "Bukowski's world, shaped and permeated by the impersonal instruments of civilized industrial society, by 20th-century knowledge and experience, remains essentially a world in which meditation and analysis play a secondary role," said John William Corrington inNorthwest Review.The talk of this world is alcohol, sex, gambling and music; the Bukowski style, on the other hand, is “a sharp, harsh voice; an excellent ear and eye for measuring the length of lines; and avoid the metaphor where a vivid anecdote fulfills the same dramatic task," said Ken Tucker at thevoice of the people. He takes my heart in his hands(1963) collects poems written between 1955 and 1963. "The individual poems come together to form a body of work unequaled in style and quality by Bukowski's contemporaries," Corrington explained. Over the course of thirty years, Bukowski published an amazing number of volumes of poetry and prose, as well as many novels.Kenneth Rexrothdeclared inNew York Times book reviewthat Bukowski "belongs to the small group of poets of real, not literary, alienation".

Although Bukowski died of leukemia in 1994, his posthumous career proved equally prolific. Partly because of the unique relationship he had with his publisher, John Martin, editor of Black Sparrow Books, Bukowski's mass production continues to appear in book form every two years. Posthumous works likeFinally people look like flowers: new poems(2008) address similar themes as in his first collection. Review of those published posthumouslyinclination to nirvana(2005) for theNew-Yorker, criticaladam kirschreported on an interview in which Bukowski described his readers as "the vanquished, the mad and the damned," adding that "the mixture of boastfulness and lamentation accurately reflects the timidity of Bukowski's poetry, which is simultaneously misanthropic and companionable, aggressive vulgar, "and secretly confidential." They refer to a bar, a seedy hotel, a horse race, a girlfriend, or any permutation thereof.Bukowski's free verse is actually a series of declarative sentences divided into a long, narrow column, storylines give an impression of speed and succinctness. Even if the language is sentimental or cliche. In Bukowski's Posthumous Collection, Kirsch said that "these 'new poems' are like the old poems, perhaps a little more repetitive, but not immediately recognizable as second-rate works or remnants." , which perhaps explains Bukowski's continued success in the literary market.

Bukowski's work has been collected and compiled into various readers, anthologies and selected works.Run with the hunted(1993) is an anthology of Bukowski's short stories and poems placed chronologically by the periods in which they were written, not published. It provides a solid overview of Bukowski's work and, given its autobiographical nature, his life. Benjamin Segedin, writingbook list,wrote of Bukowski's works: "Less self-destructive celebrations than honest self-portraits, they reveal him in all his ugliness as an outsider on the verge of respectability." Segedin continued, "Here is a collection of angry, badass, badass, as uncompromising as you could wish for." Bukowski's previously unpublished work, presented posthumously by Black Sparrow Press atWagers for the Muse: Poems and Stories(1996),gives a broader view of the verse following aweekly editorialStaff, the "original poet who takes no prisoners". Ray Olson, writing forbook list,He found his stories and poetry "magnetic and effortless to read, especially if you're prone to the existentialist appeal of the bargain".

Bukowski's life through his letters is told in bothCalls from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970(1994) miReaching for the Sun: Selected Texts, 1978-1994(2002),which covered the last years of the poet's life.In letters to his editors, publishers, friends, and fellow poets, Bukowski lashed out at the critics, praising the writers who first inspired him, and writing extensively on three of his favorite subjects: alcohol, women, and the race track. "Most importantly, they reveal a man devoted to his craft," remarked William GarganLibrary journal.But offers perhaps the most intimate insight into Bukowski's lifeThe captain went to lunch and the sailors took over the ship.(2002),a collection of diary entries from the poet's later years. It begins with its usual celebrations and musings about gambling, women and alcohol, but takes on "tragic undertones" as the author processes his leukemia diagnosis, reported Gerald LocklinReview of Contemporary Fiction."These late-game reflections reveal the complex humanity of an often caricatured character who has overcome seemingly unbearable odds to achieve the fate he has embraced as a world-class author of uncompromising novels, stories and poetry."