On Love by Charles Bukowski
Just in time to miss Valentine’s Day, as the supermarket flowers begin to droop and only the terrible chocolates remain, arrives a new collection all about love. America’s premier bar-room poet sets the record straight.
Bukowski writes his love for the many women who came into his life, those who left and those who stayed. He writes his love for friends he had and poets he respected; his love for the race track and beat-up old cars. He’s most sweet when writing about his love for his daughter and how his mind is blown by the fact that she requites it. But always he writes with an unembellished, inglorious but unbroken honesty.
It’s poetry that goes down like a quiet beer at the end of a long day – the world is still raging outside and life is still mad, but for a moment, everything is almost understandable and pretty much OK. On Love reaffirms in concrete Bukowski’s status as the master poet of the American gutter, a counter-cultural icon for anyone sceptical of the modern uniform picture of the successful and their madness for money and materialism. He looked in darker, danker places and found something much more beautiful.
There are bigger and possibly better Bukowski collections but On Love is an excellent selection of a master's work. It is both a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any fan and an ideal starting point for any newcomer.
More on Charles Bukowski – our reviews of Chinaski classic Hollywood, and Bukowski collections On Cats and On Writing.