Rob Plath (words) Janne Karlsson (ink) IN ROT WE TRUST Vol.1: Body Bag Nation. (Lummox Press, 2017) 40 pages

In this slim volume of graphic poetry, American writer Rob Plath joins forces with Swedish artist Janne Karlsson to launch an unrelentingly morose and macabre take on life & death. Through a series of 33 startling poems, the duo explore all-things-death: the ephemeral, ugly nature of every day life, how many of us lead a complacent, death-in-life existence, the inevitability of our quickly approaching doom and Plath’s & Karlsson’s urgent need to record all these thoughts & feelings through their art.

The front cover is a parody of a typical family photo. Instead of glistening teeth and wide smiles, Karlsson inks us a caricature of a father corpse posing with his two kids- all are fetid green & blood splattered, with their mouths grimly stitched shut.

The title ‘In Rot We Trust’ is an obvious pun on the American motto ‘In God We Trust’ but you will find the poetry in this collection apolitical. Instead, Plath is more concerned with examining the nature of his personal suffering and spews bile at the cosmos for allowing his birth.

In two poems entitled ‘Dear Universe’, he crudely and cynically addresses the cosmos in an accusatory tone: “Yr silver-linings/ are all shit-stained” and “cheers for all/ the fucking holes// there’s not/ much left/ for you to stab.”

This idea of a malevolent, personified supreme being causing suffering and emptiness & death is a central motif in this chapbook.  In ‘Cigarettes Sizzling in Yr Wounds’ Karlsson’s illustration shows a big hand reaching down from the sky clutching a cigarette. Below, a sprawled naked man grimaces in pain from several bleeding cigarette burns to his body.

(all poems/ illustrations in this review have been republished with the permission of the poet/artist)

Plath tersely sums up the existential human condition through an illuminating metaphor:

now & again the universe

kindly removes a bullet

ah, but that twisted fuck

just wants a bloody ashtray

Another important perspective that Plath presents his readers with is the idea that many of us, although still breathing, are already dead & a waste of fucking space. In the powerful title poem, ‘BODY BAG NATION’ Plath & Karlsson represent the average person as deluded & self-obsessed:

Rob Plath’s response to this personal & metaphysical crisis is to deeply reflect on his experiences and to “launch another motherfucking poem” (‘at 45’). In ‘a good poem’ he succinctly sums up his work: “is a cross/ between brass/ knuckles// & a toe tag.” Further, in ‘Guts & graffiti’ he metaphorically posits:

a poem begins

w/a fucking

hand grenade

in the throat

Karlsson’s accompanying illustration shows a body exploding into many parts as the speaker of the poem attempts to extend his middle finger to the heavens.

IN ROT WE TRUST is an irreverent, deeply dark portrait which rails against the tombstones of conventional thinking & the writing of poetry. As in the poem ‘Look’, Plath takes a box-cutter to our superficial notions of appearances & hope. In the end, there is no escape.

Interestingly, in one of the last poems, Plath states: i’m so slow lately… maybe / i’m dead.”

Resources

Buy the book here from Lummox Press: https://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/in-rot-we-trust/

Check out Rob Plath’s site which provides info- especially on how to buy his books, photographs and artwork: http://www.robplath.com

The madness that is all things Janne Karlsson: http://www.svenskapache.se

For a limited time find a generous sample from IN ROT WE TRUST: https://issuu.com/poetraindog/docs/_inrot_1_sampler__1_

In my copy of the book, I received from Plath a ‘toe tag poem’- an original poem manually typed on the back of a tag intended to be attached to the toe of a deceased person. How cool!

Essay: A Mourner’s Guide- Billy Collins on Death

I am a casual observer of Billy Collins’ poetry and recently read three of his books: Horoscopes for the Dead (2011), The Trouble With Poetry (2005) and Nine Horses (2002). I was curious as to why Collins, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, was so widely read and lauded. I was interested in particular with his exploration of death which has been increasingly prevalent in his poetry. I quickly learnt that although Collins writes frequently about death, his views are often neatly packaged, irreverent and trite.

His poem ‘Velocity’ got me thinking about Collins. The speaker is in a club car with his notebook and realises that “there was nothing to write about/ except life and death.” He draws “over and over again/ the face of a motorcyclist in profile-

leaning forward, helmetless,
his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.

TALKING TO THE DEAD

In Billy Collins’ world people don’t seem, to die but remain alive in his imagination and retain their basic personalities and personal histories. In ‘Grave’ the speaker, presumably Collins, visits his parent’s dual plot & pressing his ear to the soft grass he asks them what they think of his new glasses, “They make you look very scholarly,/ I hear my mother say.” Similarly, in ‘No Time’ Collins sounds his horn as he speeds past his parent’s cemetery. He imagines quaintly as if they are still alive, “Then, all day long, I think of him rising up/ to give me that look/ of knowing disapproval/ While my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.” In ‘Cemetery Ride’ the speaker pedals through a cemetery and cheerfully greets many of the dead & hopes for the impossible, “I wish I could take you all for a ride/ in my wire basket on this glorious April day.”

This tendency to communicate with the dead in a false & deluded way is furthered in ‘Thank-You Notes’ in which the speaker personally thanks “everyone who happened to die/ on the same day I was born”:

Thank you for stepping aside to make room for me,

for giving up your seat,

getting out of the way, to be blunt

More importantly, in the wry second person poem, ‘Horoscopes for the Dead’ the speaker ironically juxtaposes a reading of the daily horoscope with the extinguished dreams of the dead:

But you will be relieved to learn

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting,

nor do you have to think more of others,

and never again will creative work take a back seat

to a business responsibilities that you never really had

IMAGINING HIS DEATH

Collins tries to personalise his exploration of death by imagining his own individual demise. His treatment is characteristically thin. In ‘Rooms’ after three days of “steady, inconsolable rain, ” the speaker walks through his house and provides the reader with a running commentary as to which room would be best for him to die in. The language is detached, detective-like & cheeky in tone:

The study is an obvious choice

with its thick carpet and soothing paint,

its overstuffed chair preferable

to a doll-like tumble down the basement stairs.

And the kitchen has a certain appeal-

it seems he was boiling water for tea,

the inspector will offer, holding up the melted kettle.

Then there is the dining room,

just the place to end up facedown

at one end of its long table in a half-written letter

Death is viewed as a game, as a series of rational choices which we can make at our leisure.

In ‘Breathless’ the speaker contemplates the sleeping positions of people & then he quickly thinks about the dead and how they will permanently come to rest. In another transition, the poet recommends how he wishes to be buried:

After a lifetime of watchfulness

and nervous vigilance,

I will be more than ready for sleep

so never mind the dark suit,

the ridiculous tie

and the pale limp hands crossed on the chest.

Lower me down in my slumber,

tucked into myself

like the oldest fetus on earth.

In one of Collins’ more witty poems ‘Statues in the Park’, the speaker examines an equestrian statue in a public square and he imagines what his own memorial would look like. The poem ends in a light, playfully humorous note: “And there was I…/ down on my knees, eyes lifted,/ praying to the passing clouds/ forever begging for just one more day.”

In each of these poems, Collins is keen to imagine the viewing his dead body. He is confident and self-assured he will get the sort of death he desires. No pissed pants, bone-numbing terror or unrelenting shards of pain is in his cards.

This obsession with death is furthered in the poem ‘Delivery’ in which he finds himself “wishing that the news” of his death is delivered in the form of a child’s drawing, complete with “puffs of white smoke/ issuing from the tailpipe, drawn like flowers.”

DEATH AS ART

For the most part, Death is seen as an intellectual exercise by Billy Collins. He uses the concept to construct poems which dabble with the idea from a variety of perspectives. In ‘Simple Arithmetic’ the speaker mentions he daily spends time on a small dock gazing pensively into the lake. Today, he contemplates the whole picture before him and subtracts five hundred years: “all the houses are gone, the boats. ” Also gone is “the plane crossing the sky,” the swimming pools, & turning closer home, he meta-poetically concludes, “and gone are my notebook and my pencil/ and there I go too,/ erased by my own erasure and blown like shavings off the page.” In ‘Death in New Orleans, a Romance’ the speaker writes another clever meta-poem in a café over a glass of wine about his mind being “like a wire birdcage” and how “on the day I die…/ the wire door will spring open/ and the bird takes flight,/ looping over the ironwork of the city,/ the water tanks and windowed buildings,/ then up into the clouds and stars.” In ‘Roses’ the speaker is once again writing into his notebook, this time about how in midsummer the petals of the flowers grow “cantankerous”, turn brown on the edges and fall to the ground. He personifies their woeful public death: “then how terrible the expressions on their faces/ a kind of was it all really worth it?”

In these poems death is not viewed as an entity in itself but rather as a vehicle to construct clichéd symbolic images: erasure, flight and despoiled nature. The poems leave a remote feeling in the reader, that Collins is smug & is deliberately avoiding the stark, shrieking ugliness that death brings with it.

ON TRANSCIENCE

Collins is probably more effective at writing about the subtle tweaks which signal to us on a deeper level that all life will one day end. Yet some of us never get it. In ‘The Order of the Day’ the speaker is with his family & as “the sun shot through the branches” after a week of rain, he sees Philip Larkin-like things whole & true: ‘Everything seemed especially vivid/ because I knew we were all going to die,/ first the cat, then you, then me.”

In ‘House’ he lies down in the bedroom of a house built in 1862 and empathises with “those who have slept here before” including “the dead farmer and his dead wife” who he never knew but now provide him with company. In one of Collins’ better poems, ‘The Peasants’ Revolt’, the speaker says in a refrain that “soon enough it will all be over”:

just an expanse of white ink

or a dark tunnel coiling away and down.

No sunflowers, no notebook,

no sand-colored denim jacket

and a piece of straw in the teeth,

just a hole inside a larger hole

and the starless maw of space.

In this bleak recognition of the end of his consciousness and in everything that has helped shape his identity as a public poet, the speaker reaches a significant transition & reaffirms his commitment to the living when tells his lover that “we are still here.” He coaxes her to remove her top & lie with him:

So undo the buttons on your white blouse

and toss it over a chair back.

Let us lie down side by side

On these crisp sheets like two effigies on a tomb.

Similarly, in the second person poem ‘Bereft’ the dead are seen as the “lucky” because of “their freedom from” human commitments & responsibilities but also there is a sense of loss at the end of sensation:

no need for doorknobs, snow shovels,

or windows and a field beyond,

no more railway ticket in an inside pocket.

no more railway, no more tickets, no more pockets

No more bee chasing you around the garden

no more you chasing your hat around a corner,

no bright moon on the glimmering water,

no cool breast felt beneath an open robe.

In ‘Memento Mori’ the speaker sees himself as a mayfly, as “a soap bubble floating over the children’s party.” Standing “under the bones of a dinosaur” or in a church, he is constantly reminded of his mortality and realises that no one “has figured out a way to avoid dying.”

These poems sense effectively ephemeral nature of our lives and the need for love and acceptance.

OVERVIEW

As you can see from this brief analysis, Billy Collins writes extensively about death. The poems are clever, but usually have a feel-good, gimmicky quality about them. You see flashes of the ephemeral quality of life, but characteristically, Collins shields & humours his readers from darker visions. The closest he comes is in ‘Reaper’ when in driving to lunch, he spots a man on the side of the road who returns his gaze & there is something about his face which gives him a “jolt of fear.” But he quickly returns us to our comfortable road.

Further Reading

Extended discussion on Collins’ poetry- Ernest Hilbert Wages of Fame: The Case of Billy Collins: http://www.cprw.com/Hilbert/collins2.htm

Review of Nine Horses: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/apr/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

Billy Collins poems on Poem Hunter: http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/poems/page-1/?a=a&l=3&y=

Book Review: Rob Plath Death is Dead Epic Rites Press, 2012, 47 pages.

This is Rob Plath’s third full-length collection of poetry published by the highly innovative Epic Rites Press. Death is Dead is a fascinating, gut-wrenching auto-biographical account of Plath’s ongoing interior quest to discover meaning and hope as the walls close in around him. The main thrust of Plath’s tome is that he has given up the booze & smokes and has adopted  a simple, solitary existence. Through his monk-like path of intense personal introspection and fasting, he has learnt how to live with his inner demons, and has- for now- achieved an enlightened calmness. Due to the slimness of this volume, it is not as ambitious in scope as Plath’s previous two ERP collections, but it will certainly not disappoint readers familiar with his earlier writings.

The poems in Death is Dead are characteristically first person, confessional and free verse in style. The language is sliced to the bone, with only a few of the works exceeding fifty words. Several of the poems appeal directly to the reader and offer us pithy maxims blow-torched on the existential humanist idea that we are the masters of our own salvation. A central motif honed in early is how many of us live unexamined and passionless existences. In the powerful third person poem ‘awake at last’, a man suddenly wakes with a creative fount of music in his head: ‘it was very/ strange, this new thing. he felt awake at last.’ Yet his epiphany is short-lived and far too late.  As he ‘raised his/ hands like a triumphant symphony conductor’ he hits the ceiling of his coffin & tragically realizes he is dead & totally alone. The cautionary poem ‘unlived lines’ furthers the idea forwarded by Plath that we must live life to the max without fear: ‘don’t fear wrinkles/ upon yr face// they exist/ simply from living// rather fear/ the missing lines// from living not/ quite enough.’

In ‘doubling the weight’ Plath asks us to acknowledge the reality that we will all die and in the poem ‘too late’ to ‘live fiercely.’ In ‘don’t let it all go to dust’ he extends the point that we must wake up to ourselves and embrace life. The poet metaphorically posits that ‘we all sit/ kicking our legs over the side/ of our open grave.’ He asks us: are we going to ‘allow the beautiful visions’ sleeping in our ‘marrow/ to wake up’ or are we going to ‘jump into death’? Similarly, in the micro poem ‘the challenge’ he directly confronts the reader: be/ so/ awake&/ so/ alive/ that when/ yer/ time arrives/ Death/ will need/ two/ sickles/ to/ finally/ drag you/ away.’

These poems appear to embody Martin Heiddigger’s existential notion of Dasein- or existence. Simply stated, what distinguishes us from animals is our consciousness that we will one day die. Therefore, we have a responsibility to become fully aware of who we are and to confront our mortality, and the reality, that despite our relationships with others, we are essentially alone.

What makes this collection unique from Plath’s previous work is that at 41, he has given up ‘all his vices’ and is soberly confronting the black dog of his inner demons. His struggle against depression is wildly traumatic and fought internally day by day.  The poem ‘w/out feeling quite mad’ suggests that his suffering can emerge without cause, by ‘just peacefully sitting.’ It is only in rare moments that Plath experiences a reprieve, and it is always transitory. And it is only a matter of time as in the poem ‘thankful’ before the walls watching over him close in on him once again.

Several poems document Plath’s struggle to dull the intensity of his shrieking pain in the simple pleasures of life. In ‘the expert’ he is silently soothed by closely observing his cat throughout the day, in ‘sunday blues’ he curbs his blues by mirroring the ‘quietness of a cow’ & in contemplating Kahlil Gibran’s aphorism, ‘we won’t understand each other until we reduce the language to seven words.’ In ‘myth or no myth’ he rigorously fasts and as his ribs stick out he finds contentment: ‘as bones surface like/ undiscovered islands/ full of peace.’ In ‘my new tune’ he runs into an old drinking buddy & wants ‘to toss/ the weight of sobriety that i carry every second/ onto his shoulders’ but he remains vigilant: ‘on the way to my car, I ran my fingers/ up & down a row of my ribs/ while humming a victorious tune to myself.’

The opening poem in the collection ‘blue cats and red birds’ immediately establishes the reawakened, come-back-from-the-dead tone enshrined in Plath’s reinvention of himself as a man & poet: ‘It’s so nice not to wake up/ w/a hangover that makes you/ feel like a dead, beaten dog/ wired to a crumbling skeleton// it’s so nice not to wake up//next to somebody who’s fucking/ somebody else///it’s so nice not to wake up//& wish you didn’t wake up.’

Rather than being trapped  ‘in the same black sack’ Plath has been ‘tied up in for forty-one years,’ he wakes up to ‘draw a blue cat/ & a red bird in love.’ Instead of being hungover and dwelling on thoughts of betrayal & suicide, he draws simple portraits of innocent animals, symbolic of his new lifestyle. Similarly, in ‘happy walls’ he writes that ‘i once lived at a residence/ made out of toe tags’ and how ‘I went quite mad there’: ‘now i live in a place//made out of/ red cats & blue dogs// the happy walls yap & mew/ & chase one another/ beneath a roof built/ of buddhas.’

In the metaphoric poem ‘unsaluting my past’ he writes how he has changed: ‘I’ve painted all my skulls/ bright yellow & bright blue/ & bright orange// you might even mistake/ them for balloons/ do I remember death?/ what the fuck is death?’ This latter idea is mirrored in the poem ‘don’t just cry for the dying man’ from which the collection’s title derives its name. In its stunning conclusion the speaker brazenly proclaims, if Nietzsche was right, ‘then we’d all be gods/ & we could shout, Death is Dead.’

Plath, of course, is not suggesting literally that death can be conquered rather that it can be transcended through people realizing there are no gods and that we ultimately control our own destinies. In ‘altho it may be in vain’ the speaker, presumably Plath, makes the suggestion that immortality can be achieved through the word:  While others are ‘doing sadly/ human things’ he will be ‘working w/the word’: ‘reaching, reaching/ past Bastard Death/ past Brother Nothingness// for something/ perhaps, like god.’ Like Bukowski, Plath’s ongoing search for meaning through his writing becomes an important therapy to help him ward off the mad barking dogs behind the door.

Towards the end of the collection there a few poems which metaphorically recount how Plath has learnt to ‘hug’ his demons and how he drinks ‘sweet chai or chamomile tea’ with them. In ‘at ease today’ he comments on how ‘so polite’ his demons are & as they drink their ‘steaming cups of tea’ he smiles & says ‘yr demons need love too.’  In ‘hug yr demons’ he writes: ‘don’t retreat/ or fight them-// hug yr demons// kiss each/ long, black/ splinter/ protruding/ from their/ screaming/ faces// & w/ bloody lips,/ smile.’ In ‘almost forty-two years old’ he says matter-of-factly: ‘i make tea for my/ company of demons. i refuse to let them be/ victorious. also, i don’t want to be known for/ murdering myself.’ More revealing, in ‘it takes guts’ Plath interesting comments that it feels ‘strange climbing into bed w/all yr senses & non-/ drunkenly facing the mute ninety degree walls… completely aware of the darkness & the demons/ whispering at the foot of the bed.’

Despite Plath’s apparent reconciliation with his darker sides, he rages against complacency and vows not to ignore his sorrow. In ‘whenever i realise’ he agonizingly states , ‘whenever i’m tricked into thinking i’ve put myself back/ together again/ whenever the mouth of my terrible wound quits/ silently screaming’ he vows to ‘curl up once more’ and inhabit his pain ‘inside the belly of absence.’ ‘Unsurrender’ is another threshold poem in which he grapples with the terror of existence. It reads much like a personal manifesto. In it Plath rails against ‘wanting to feel whole’, ‘wanting some level of safety’ in having a strong personal bond with another: ‘i’ll live each day w/this heart &/ this heart alone…who wants those other/ things anyway, that hushed peace that sucks yr blood/ like a massive spider? i want this solitary, shattered / savageness forever.’ In ‘blood in disguise’ he more comprehensively describes the ‘slim ledge’ on which he prefers to exist: ‘I don’t need anything: love, drugs, booze, smokes…i certainly don’t need yer/ fucking god who has never existed at all. I just need/ this slim ledge & this red fist flowering behind my ribs/ & the Word- which is actually eight pints of blood in/ disguise.’

Rob Plath’s poetry is inextricably linked to his own deeply wounded experiences. Death is Dead is a harrowing descent into the mind of a poet who is clinging to his sanity by the barest of fingernails. Yet Plath ultimately finds transformation in his extraordinary power to shape his dark instinctual thoughts and feelings into an enduring aesthetic. His poem ‘on this dark brink’ is an adept emblem to describe how his life & art have become fused as one. At its core, as in Plath’s own deeply considered living, the poem confronts the allusive, flawed, contradictory paradox of existence with a defiant, humanist glare: ‘never been/ more alone// never crazier// never more lost// never more awake.’

Buy Rob Plath’s books at Epic Rites Press here: http://www.epicrites.org/

If you are interested, see my previous reviews of Rob Plath’s Epic Rites Press poetry collections on BOLD MONKEY:

a bellyful of anarchy (2009): http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/bbook-review-rob-plath-belly-full-of.html

there’s a fist dunked in blood (2010): http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/rob-plath-theres-fist-dunked-in-blood.html

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski New Poems COME ON IN! Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, 2006, 279 pages.

This is one of the many posthumous Bukowski books published by Ecco after they bought out Black Sparrow Press in 2002. The preface states officiously that ‘these poems are part of an archive of unpublished work that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death.’ The book is edited by Buk’s long term editor John Martin and is a highly readable blend of poems which will not disappoint Bukowski’s ‘true believers’. The collection is not presented chronologically but provides an overview of the full gamut of Bukowski’s work. You will find here recollections from his childhood, fascinating anecdotes about writers, conversations with his fans, barkeeps, strangers, an eclectic mix of damaged women & also poems which document his struggle with cancer and his descent into death.

The title poem  'come on in' invites the reader into Bukowski's 'wormy hell' where the reader, like the poet is 'a pawn', 'a sucker'. The speaker makes a direct appeal to the reader, 'we need to discover a new will and a new/ way.' I'm not sure what Bukowski's new way is but he finds many inventive ways in which to entertain the reader through his use of humour, the crudity of his insights into humanity and his continuous experimentation with form, subject matter and point of view.

Bukowski is full of contradictions. He is disgusted by life around him but takes joy in being called a 'depraved' drunkard who calls 'every woman a whore' (‘my personal psychologist’). He hates people but craves their affections. He resists death but longs for its embrace. It is in the paradoxical interplay between humour and tragedy  that Bukowski  produces his best work.

On Writing

Much of Bukowski's appeal amongst underground writers results from his self conscious discussion of the writing process and the many satirical portraits of the literary world that he creates. Through his extraordinary determination and some help from 'lady luck' Bukowski was able to pave his own way as an imaginative writer and seventeen years after his death he still sells tens of thousands of books each year.  

He has many enemies of literature in his sights. Characteristically, Bukowski is scathing of academic verse and puts the boot into those who have sold out along the way by accepting comfortable university tenures. In ‘the "Beats"’ he is derisive that some people still connect him with Beat writers who he dismisses as vain and full of ‘public postering.' He views them as 'hucksters of the despoiled word' & clamoring for handouts,/ still talking the same/ dumb/ shit.' The poem ‘do you believe a man can be taught to write?’ is essentially a critique of the writing industry, particularly of MFA programs which work from the premise that any idiot can write. The hard hitting ‘a note upon modern poesy’ goes further by critiquing modern poetry in general- in particular, its reliance on literary allusion and obscurity. Bukowski sarcastically quips, ‘if you can’t understand a poem then/ it almost certainly is a/ good one.’ More to the point he argues that poetry is headed in the right direction ‘when your average garage mechanics/ start bringing books of poesy to read/ on their lunch breaks.’ In another venomous poem ‘talking about the poets’ he concludes that it ‘will be a beautiful day’ when ‘many a darling/ poet would either be allowed to/ starve or forced to get a/ real job.’ He outrageously states that they might be better off robbing banks or selling drugs.

More interesting perhaps are Bukowski’s views on his own motivations & writing processes. In ‘on the sunny banks of the university’ while considering the ‘comfortable’ poetry of an English Lit professor he quips:

I think good poetry should startle, shatter and,

yes, entertain while getting as close to the truth as

possible.

I can get all the comfort I need from a good

cigar.

One of the best poems in the collection ‘200 years’ he clearly spells out how poetry differs from the factories and time clocks:

writing’s different, you’re floating out there in the

white air, you’re hanging from the high-wire,

you’re sitting up in a tree and they’re working at

the trunk with a power

saw…

A main message to readers is to ‘keep it going/ keep it/ hot’ (‘this machine is a fountain’) And ‘once the poem is written, the only need after that/ is to write/ another’ not to read it to other people (‘I’m not all-knowing but…’). In ‘Paris in the spring’ Bukowski explains that he never wrote for money ‘but to keep himself out of the madhouse.’

What I admire about Bukowski is that he understands the limitations of his writing but knows that the form he uses best suits his material. In an amusing conversion about Bukowski's alter ego Chinaski, an unknown third person speaker castigates the fictional writer  as having 'no idea what a stanza is/ or for that matter- a line break./ he just begins at the top/ of the page and runs to the/ bottom.' A common criticism of Bukowski's poetry is that it is merely prose dissected to resemble poetry. In 'from the Dept. of English' he thinks it is sweetly ironic that his poems have been accepted for the department's Literary Journal. His poems and stories are now regularly taught in universities around the world.

On Relationships

Bukowski’s poems about his relationships with women often raise charges of sexism because of his speaker’s blunt, egotistical views. The poems in this collection are hugely varied in their view of relationships and cover many of the author’s favourite topics- sexual attraction, infidelity, betrayal, unrequited love, incompatibility and love making. In ‘endless love’ he writes about a passionless married couple who have stayed together for ’60 or 70 years’ and have stayed together not out of love but because ‘fate / fear and/ circumstances have/ bound them/ eternally together.’ In ‘sex sister’ it is his girlfriend who is the sexual predator. She stalks him everywhere & later trashes his car. In the third person ‘fooling marie (the poem)’ he meets his archetypal woman at the race track- ‘strawberry blond with round hips, well-bosomed, long legs’. He wins big & after his fat frame mounts her ‘young marvelous’ body he takes a shower. When he opens the bathroom door she is gone and so has ‘his pants with the car keys and his wallet.’ In ‘red hot mail’ young women send the elderly poet suggestive letters. He trashes them and asks himself: ‘where were all these eager/ girls/ when I was starving, broke, young and/ alone?... I only wished now some lass had/ chanced upon me then/ when I so needed her hair blowing in my/ face/ and her eyes smiling into mine.’ Instead they left him sitting in tiny rented rooms ‘terribly alone with/ suicide mornings and/ park bench/ nights.’

Bukowski entertains us with his adult takes on relationships. This is not the messy, dragged out affairs which involve the children or grandchildren of real life, but rather Bukowski’s fantasy world which does not involve true responsibility or long-term commitment. As in ‘alone again’ the speaker thinks about past women in his life ‘living somewhere else/ sitting somewhere else/ standing somewhere else/ or maybe feeding a child.’ He directly addresses those women who think their relationship with him can be revived. The poem concludes harshly: ‘this poem will last much/ longer than we/ did.// it deserves to:/ you see/ its strength is/ that it seeks/ no/ mate at/ all.’ He seems to play the tough guy that he doesn’t need women while at other times he is so desperate to hear a female voice that he dials up an automated operator to listen to her announcing the time (‘operator’). Bukowski’s own life didn’t seem to have much long-term stability until he married Linda Lee in 1985 when he was sixty-five.

On Death

Many of the poems in this collection are contemplations of his certain death approaching, ‘towards the loss, the leaking away’ without god.  In 'to the ladies no longer here' while driving to the race track he finds temporary consolation in the thought that he is waiting for death, 'Death sits in the seat next to/ me// we make a lovely/ couple. In ‘hello there’ he jokes that ‘when death comes with its last cold kiss/ I’ll be ready:/ just another whore/ come to/ shake me/ down.’ More disturbing in 'hello and goodbye' he feels ‘stuck’ in his poor body & ‘poor life’ as it slowly dissolves into nothing. He exclaims, 'there's no hell like your own hell.' In 'alone in the chair' after a harrowing 'twisting/ screaming/ churning' pain inside his brain & guts he feels 'trapped like a fish to bake.'

He wavers between an acceptance of death and the joy that he is still alive. In 'hello there!' he says, 'when death comes with its last cold kiss/ I'll be ready.' In 'Sumatra Cum Laude' he says, 'you can only pray for a quick clean finish.' In a remission in 'another comeback'  he considers himself lucky to be able to climb 'back up out of the ooze, out of the thick black tar' and rise up like 'a modern Lazarus.' But inevitably, the pain returns and as in 'hurry slowly' the dark voices remind him he has lived too long & tell him to 'give way' and to 'get out.' The bleakest poem is 'the disease of existence.' He waits for death in his bed, feeling 'mutilated', but it won't come. He finds solace in the idea that death will bring 'that final separation' from humanity whom he despises, but in the waiting he feels more greatly 'dark humanity's/ insufferable/ relentless/ presence.'

In the end Bukowski must learn to balance the horror of waiting for death with his ‘endless determination to endure.' In ‘two nights before my 72^nd birthday’ he mockingly suggests he ‘should be able to afford a decent burial.’ In ‘everything hurts’ as he senses his mortality, he appreciates more the ‘small things’ how everything around him ‘suddenly seem…new.’ Driving along streets, he watches people in their cars and he thinks; ‘each of them must finally/ die.’ In the last poem in the collection ‘mind and heart’ he anticipates his own death and appeals again to the reader:  'grieve not for me. /read/ what I’ve written/ then forget it /all’.

Conclusion

This is a solid collection which represents some of Bukowski’s last work, consciously written when he knew he was dying of cancer. He knows he has nothing to lose and continues writing for his growing readership. He writes about what he knows best- relationships, writing and the pain which will kill him and end all sensations, all memories. His writing is clear, accessible and always full of fresh insights and surprises. He is far more than ‘just a drunk who writes’ (‘Paris in the spring’). He is far more than an aberrant American voice who writes about whores and puking (‘I have continued on regardless’). Bukowski is a smart, funny, irreverent voice amongst a wasteland of conformity.