The Girl with the Words

The Girl with the Words
Author Tyler Webster

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Charles Bukowski Response

I love Charles Bukowski’s precision within his word choice. He is able to draw a lot of meaning from his small amount of text used. Additionally, Bukowski does a great job of stringing his words together. Each word, whether large are small, serves a purpose within his text, and captivate the reader’s attention.

I’ve come to think that Bukowski presents fairly simple topics throughout his poetry. Rather than overcrowding the reader’s head with various metaphorical waste, Bukowski keeps it simple and precisely eludes to his point via small groups of few words arranged together.

I thoroughly enjoy this ending to “Be Kind” he has utilized:

“age is no crime //
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life // among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
// is.”

From this ending to his poem, I feel as though I have been left with a piece of wisdom: One’s never too old to start living, just as long as one indeed starts living and doesn’t continue on the wasted life path.

In his poem “Alone with Everybody”, I am still able to appreciate the great power each of his words hold, however I am not the biggest fan of this rather solemn subject matter.

“there's no chance 
at all: we are all trapped 
by a singular 
fate. // nobody ever finds 
the one.  //

the city dumps fill 
the junkyards fill 
the madhouses fill 
the hospitals fill 
the graveyards fill //
nothing else 
fills.”


His imagery is intense, alluding to the invasion of unaccounted for heaps of trash and disturbed individuals. I enjoy Bukowski’s word choice, and I appreciate his ability to say more with less, however this poem is holds a heavier, more pessimistic voice that I do not typically seek whenever pursuing poetry.   

No comments:

Post a Comment