Press "Enter" to skip to content

Charles Bukowski Love Poems

Here is a list of Charles Bukowski Love Poems

  1. Raw With Love
  2. The Most Beautiful Woman In Town
  3. An Almost Made Up Poem

Charles Bukowski, who began his career in 1944 as a mostly unemployed essayist and who was acclaimed as the most popular and best-selling writer of American poetry of the post war period, is known for his unconventional writing style and obscene language. Born in Los Angeles, Bukowski had a hard time growing up with an abusive father that made him cynical, sharp-minded and grounded. However, it did not destroy his sense of beauty, spirituality and romantics.

A bit dark and obscure relationships with many women, which didn’t last long, granted the poet a great genius and vision to produce from 1960 to 1986 such impressive love poems collections as ‘Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail’, ‘Love Is a Dog from Hell’, ‘You Get so Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense’ and quite a few others. Bukowski’s strong narration and free verse empower his lyrical character to absorb and live through his own feelings of insanity, pain, rejection and his broken heart. His verses are usually long and remind ballads or, even, monologues led by someone who has become too exhausted of life to tell his whole story.

Charles Bukowski`s love poetry is truly, exceptionally dark and hopeless. For him love is deep, idealistic, and vital but it has been corrupted by people with their greed and selfishness: ‘people so tired/ mutilated/ either by love or no love./ people just are not good to each other/ one on one.’ For instance, the poet’s ‘Raw in Love’ has become a symbol of betrayal and disillusionment, for one will never be the same again.

Notwithstanding, Bukowski refuses to fight for it, love. Furthermore, he wants others to stop trying since it won’t help as, to his opinion, there will be one more cynic born to the world, just like Charles himself.