When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I've read almost every Charles Bukowski poetry book, and I always return to him. My favourite Bukowski book would be Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Although I think Purdy and Atwood have better command of language than Bukowski, he just knocks me over sometimes with a line or an image. An example of this would be the poem, “True Story,” which is about a man who disfigured himself. Somehow, Bukowski turns the poem into a great story of sympathy, but not just for the man in the poem, but for all of humanity. Then there's “the tragedy of the leaves,” which reeks of humanity and our inevitable failures that come with age. This sort of connection, even if focused on a dark side of people, resonates with me.
The other reason Bukowski is a poet I often reread is because he wrote so many bad poems. Some of his later books are collections of poems that his editor kept over the years. These books do have some gems, but there are also some that don't do much more than fill a page. Bukowski's bad poems, however, remind me that not everything I write has to be perfect. This idea is actually quite freeing for any type of artist.
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