https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/sep/05/bukowski
“In the rush to file away Bukowski as a booze-addled fluke, his ability to lay down a truly beautiful line has often been overlooked. Take these lines describing the genesis of Los Angeles:
this land punched-in cuffed-out divided held like a crucifix in a deathhand
Or take his poem Tragedy of the Leaves which ends with the heartbreaking lines:
and I walked into a dark hall where the landlady stood execrating and final, sending me to hell, waving her fat, sweaty arms and screaming screaming for rent because the world has failed us both.
Reading his extensive back catalogue you will stumble upon a hundred, a thousand moments of brilliance like these.
Bukowski embodies the idea of the “punk poet” even better than the poets who came from the punk scene. Jim Carroll and Patti Smith were too in thrall to the romanticism of Rimbaud to truly “speak it plain”. It is Bukowski’s machine gun delivery that creates poetry that actually relates to the back-to-basics ethos of punk rock.
Unlike most poets, Bukowski was also a master prose writer. My favourite work of Bukowski’s has to be the short story collection Hot Water Music. This 1983 anthology is Bukowski at his prime, and contains some of the best writing the man ever produced: The Death of the Father (parts 1 and 2) is a heartbreaking – yet ghoulishly funny – dissection of the days following his father’s death. Some Hangover opens with the shocking premise that our narrator has just awoken with a hangover and no recollection of the night before, and is accused of molesting his neighbour’s daughters while in an alcoholic blackout. Not Quite Bernadette features the attention-grabbing opener: “I wrapped the towel around my bloody cock and called the doctor’s office.” What all of these stories share is a writing style that has been totally pared back, and a view of humanity that is cynical, deadpan, and almost entirely without judgment.”
How my heart sings 