Book Review: On Love by Charles Bukowski

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Book Review: On Love by Charles Bukowski

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This collection centres a lot around death, loss, and the decay of beauty, which are all relevant when talking about ‘love.’ As usual, in the Bukowski style, these poems were cynical but also touching. Bukowski has this detached view of the world he writes about while he’s seemingly in his own familiar loop of drinking, having sex, pounding on his typewriter, repeat – detached from the world outside. It’s surprising to say but he’s actually very critical of himself – there’s a lot of open shame on his end. As if he were well aware that he was a long overgrown child. He was crude but also remorseful. He had lost a woman he once really loved – Jane. (Apparently his first serious girlfriend.) And henceforth, Bukowski seems to only be loving and full of love when it concerns his daughter Marina. I think somehow he deep, deep down immortalized all of his escapades and encounters in order to make them hurt less. In some obscure way of remembering and simultaneously being remembered – to have grazed love if only briefly and at a distance. It was quite obvious (and pointed out by him) that the lack of love comes from childhood years of rejection by his parents. At 44, he became a father and at 55, he’s bragging about the fight between two women over him – one who is 24 and the other, 34. In the end, Bukowski, himself, seems aware that as much he can’t receive love, he has been more than fortunate many times to be at the receiving end of love, especially when he did not deserve it.

“Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.” 

“In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe.” 

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