Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
This posthumous collection of poems by Bukowski (Pulp, LJ 6/1/96) is a wonderful swan song. The settings remain mostly the same‘taprooms, race tracks, and back alleys‘and the themes largely unchanged‘fragile relationships, heavy drinking, and the art of writing. However, one new theme that surfaces in this collection is the acceptance of death and old age. Bukowski knows he faces death and seeks "the grave to find a more/ comfortable/ position." He realizes that death will be his final act, and he will be "alone but not lonely." Accepting it, he writes with clarity and precision‘"I will write the stuff only for myself/ and to myself"‘and goes on to realize that in death he will "no longer defile these pages/ with my raw and simple/ lines." The only drawback of this work lies in a handful of weaker poems that show Bukowski attempting to be clever, and this is when he fails. For the most part, however, readers will see Bukowski at his best. Highly recommended.‘Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.
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