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Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) had a gift for creating evocative titles, including the title for his 1972 collection of poetry, "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck". The title is apt. It derives from a beautiful poem, one of Bukowski's finest, "Mockingbird". I read Bukowski's poem as a parable on death and loss and cruelty. During the summer, a mockingbird has been following and taunting a cat. In response to the taunting, Bukowski writes that the cat "said something angry to the mockingbird/which I didn't understand." One day, Bukowski sees the cat walk "calmly up the driveway" with the bird alive in its mouth "no longer mocking." Bukowski writes "it was asking, it was praying/but the cat/ striding down through centuries/ would not listen." The cat crawls under a car with its prey "to bargain it to another place." And Bukowski concludes, "summer was over".
Not every poem in this volume is as effective as "Mockingbird." Bukowski was a prolific but erratic writer of short, unrhymed and unmetered poetry. Bukowski wrote in the language of common speech, punchy and colloquial. At its best, his writing has passion, rawness, a tough vulgarity, and, frequently a sardonic humor. His poetry tends to be autobiographical, but he also writes short scenes and narratives, such as "Mockingbird." In the early parts of this volume, Bukowski writes effectively of the life of the urban poor, his experiences with women, his life at the racetrack, and his thoughts on writing poetry. The themes of his poems are frequently dark, including loneliness, death, suicide, and aging. The poems in the latter part of the volume begin to take a more positive, mellower tone, as Bukowski writes of his love for his wife and for his young daughter.
Besides "Mockingbird," the poems I enjoyed in this volume include "the last days of the suicide kid", Bukowski's reflections on growing old, "My friend William", a story of a friend who seemingly had attained success in his career and in his marriage, "consummation of grief", in which Bukowski writes that "I was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead", the poem "he wrote in lonely blood", Bukowski's tribute to his fellow California poet Robinson Jeffers, "a sound in the brush", a story of a casualty of war, "american matador", on the theme of sex and death, and, on, one of Bukowski's preoccupations, "I saw an old-fashioned whore today".
The poems I have mentioned show the qualities of Bukowski, the toughness and grit, that will be familiar to most of his readers. I want to conclude with a poem by Bukowski that shows a part of him that may be less familiar. This poem, "marina" is written to his young daughter.
"majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun,
on the carpet-
out the door
picking a
flower, ha!
An old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha! And I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.
Bukowski had his sentimental and tender side that he usually kept carefully hidden. This collection will appeal to lovers of the "Poet of Skid Row".
