Charles Bukowski: Poetry for the rest of us?

When I read about Charles Bukowski in the New Yorker, in the book review piece called Smashed(titled after the recent book about the 'Story of a Drunken Girlhood' I guess), I somehow mistook him for Charles Olson, whose Maximus Poems had a narrator by the name Maximus, possibly a reference to that poet's towering size. Which of course goes to show my general ignorance about poets and this, to Bukowski fans, would be an unpardonable act of ignorance for someone claiming to have even a passing acquaintance with poetry. But it hints at my first impressions of Bukowski: masculine, no-nonsense, direct and raw, shocking with great physical presence, almost formidable; kind of like the Stanley Kowalski among poets.

This article which profiles Bukowski's life--his fabulous, brutish, hard-drinking phases where he worked in factories performing manual labor and frequented numerous bars downing colossal quantities of liquor (" boozehound with an oceanic thirst")--is quite balanced and informative. It tries to explore his mystique and the attraction of his work, especially with his in-your-face, blasphemous utterances which he offers to us in his unique poetic form.

There have surely been many poets who have broken with the genteel traditions of poetry and have written about blood, sweat and tears, about every day life and plain every day people, in unadorned verse: Carl Sandberg, for one. Yet, Bukowski seems to have connected in many other ways as well, especially with the underdog as the review quotes him saying: "...So these are my readers, you see? They buy my books—the defeated, the demented and the damned—and I am proud of it."

His book, Slouching Towards Nirvana, was on the poetry shelf in B&N and I decided to acquaint myself with his work. I guess one of the first things that would strike anyone who, even perfunctorily, goes through his work is the direct, simple, everyday language and the sheer accessibility of his poems. Absent are impossibly mysterious and abstract images, florid styles and any sophistry. Among the poems I read, there was one about "Paper and People" which railed against the tyrrany of endless paper(work) overwhelming his life; another which dwelt frankly on "Writer's Block"; and one which wryly commented upon the fondness of poets to use "Cicadas" in poems...simple, uncomplicated themes put forth in a straightforward, easy-flowing narrative, almost breathless at times.

They are almost reassuring for the faltering, awkward, unsure novice poet; they would make him/her believe in the importance of being true to oneself and writing the way thoughts come tumbling out...and not wait for some grand forms, ornate styles and surreal images...and this I am sure is part of his great appeal too...