Charles Bukowski

   Charles Bukowski was quite a character. Bukowski relied on experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using direct language and violence and sexual imagery. Many people found his writing offensive. He writes with a nothing-to-lose truthfulness which makes him different from most writers. Bukowski was very much into alcohol, sex and even violence. Bukowski went to school and dropped out in the beginning of WWII and went to New York to become a writer.

     Throughout his traveling and recieving many rejection slips for his writing. After a bit he decided to give up with writing and move. Until he experienced a near death situation and he came back to writing. He writes many short stories. Some of his writing will be complete nonsense, such as his poems about his cats. Bukowski spent his days gambling, smoking, drinking or making love. He uses vulgar language and speaks a lot about his bad decisions, his past lovers and his dead lovers. 

   Bukowski’s free verse is really a series of declared sentences broken up into a long, narrow column, the short lines giving an impression of speed and neatly short expression even when the language is sentimental or clichéd.

 

  I've made up a poem in a Bukowski style sort of way.

"What a contradiction it is

to stare into the eyes of death and still laugh

still dream

still drink

I light another cigarette

I haven't died yet so why fear.

My cat ponders the halls

never leaves me in peace

sits and meows

licks

purrs

anything a cat would do

they don't fear death

so why should I?"