Book Review: "New Poems Book 4" by Charles Bukowski

"we are all

museums of fear"

- Charles Bukowski

Bukowski's poetry is growing on me and I don't know why but here we are. New Poems Book 4 is a terror-riddled nightmare fuelled horror story of what I think the reader is to believe is his everyday life but I genuinely think if you lived like this every single day you would be dead long before Bukowski died. I think that Bukowski rather did exaggerate his experiences but there's nothing wrong with that. As I learn more about his life I am shocked at the fact he was married for a second time after his first wife left him. Be that as it may, he is a terrible human being but that doesn't mean he is necessarily wrong about everything and this book is what will prove that point for you.

One of the poems within is called In This Place in which Bukowski details some of the sadnesses of existence, the fact that the speaker's own "pattern" of life forms a "shadow on the wall" before him almost feels something like Thomas Chatteron would write and honestly, I couldn't stop thinking about him during the short reading of this poem. Another poem that made me think of Thomas Chatterton was perhaps No Eulogies, Please which details Bukowski's want for no phoney asshole at his funeral, talking about how great he was. Again, it is Thomas Chatterton-like in its sentiment. I say this because I have always associated Charles Bukowski with being like a modern Chatterton in a way, even though Chatterton died at 17, there is still something there - like a spark, an ignition, something.

Apart from this, the poem Picture Show details Bukowski's experience of going to see a horror film for free and yet, there was something about it that felt too commercial. I'm not going to lie to you when I say that literally all I could think of whilst reading this poem was RHPS but that's besides the point. This poem is about the misunderstanding between one man and the ever-expanding cultural landscape of America. It's a common theme throughout the anthology but I think that this is probably the best example of it. This is similar in some ways to Poem for Nobody which is also about the misunderstanding of things that are happening, but this time the misunderstanding is coming from the poet and the recipient of the poem. I honestly believe that Poem for Nobody is one of the best poems in the whole anthology.

One of the main themes in the whole anthology is perhaps the idea that your life is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things and therefore, you should do what you feel like. I felt like perhaps many of these would apply to a teen-hood antihero of mine named Julian from the book Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. I'm not sure why I made that connection, but it seems to me that maybe if Julian were to read or write poetry, it would be this book specifically. It is sad, there are undertones of depression, especially in one of the best poems of the anthology The Suicide Kid. There's something that tastes bitter in the book, as if we aren't meant to be reading it, as though it is someone's private diary - it feels invasive and raw and we feel like crap for invading. Charles Bukowski makes these assumptions about the reader perfectly but most of all, he gives us the most raw and inmost thoughts of his own - we are there, and he doesn't give a shit.

I have to say I'm enjoying this so much more than Bukowski's prose, which feels almost like it should have had an editor go through it with a fine tooth comb before publication. His poetry though, never gets tired, never gets old and seems to me to be that fine line between someone who wants to be a bohemian at 19, finds out it's all bullshit at 25 and then returns to bohemianism realising they were doing it wrong the first time they tried it out at 19, in their 30s. As you can tell, my opinion of him is turning.