Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Book

Reviewing Bukowski by summarizing what he wrote about tends to make a reviewer sound more than a little off to people who are not familiar with his work. All I know for certain is that no other writer has ever felt as real as Bukowski does to me. Both of his feet are grounded in harsh, and at times, small-minded reality. I'm certain I've said this before, but the longer Bukowski's writing is, the less I like it, though I still enjoy everything of his that I have read. It's just that I love his poetry the most, with his short stories and novels in second. A possibly obsessive and difficult idea to read every book of poetry by Bukowski has taken root in my head but we will see how that fares.

While reading this collection over the last week, I would periodically tear a piece from the receipt I was using as a bookmark and save a certain page or poem I liked or wanted to remember above all of the others. When I finished, I had no receipt and too many tiny bits of paper hanging out to mention. That is a sign of an excellent collection.

Many of these poems were either darkly humorous or graphically violent. Above all else, this collection was sad. Bukowski wrote most of, if not all of these poems, after who many consider to be the great love of his life passed away. It shows. If I had not known this before reading, I would have known something had happened to the author considering the subject of many of the poems. Bukowski sounds more human here than in anything else of his I have read.

A few poems did stand out slightly more than others. What a Man I Was opened the book perfectly. freedom, about a man who feels castrated by his cheating significant other and who then decides to literaly castrate himself, followed and the hits kept coming from there. Down Thru the Marching made me incredibly sad. I thoroughly enjoyed What Seems to be the Trouble Gentlemen? and 18 Cars Full of Men Thinking of What Could Have Been was deeply disturbing for some odd reason. sleeping woman was beautiful and Did I Ever Tell You, one of the longer poems, was quite interesting and funny depending on how I read it. So, read this if you like real poetry, manly poetry, honest poetry, uncomplicated and deceptively simple poetry. And because I just have to include at least one of the poems I mentioned, here is the shortest of my favorites:

Down Thru the Marching
they came down thru the marching,
down thru St. Paul, St. Louis, Atlanta,
Memphis, New Orleans, they came
down thru the marching, thru
balloons and popcorn, past drugstores
and blondes and whirling cats,
they came down thru the marching
scaring the goats and the kids in
the fields, banging against the minds
of the sick in their hot beds, and
down in the cellar I got out the
colt. I ripped a hole in the screen
for better vision and when the legs
came walking by on top of my head,
I got a colonel, a major and 3 lieutenants
before the band stopped playing;
and now it's like a war, uniforms
everywhere, behind cars and brush,
and plang plang plang
my cellar is all fireworks, and I
fire back, the colt as hot as a
baked potato, I fire back and sing
sing, "Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord; He is
tramping out the vintage..."