Reading. Bukowski. (again).

I have loved some books for their title alone. It seems to me that this year has come rather suddenly to an end, so much so that I have to shake my head in wonder that it has happened at all. And yet so much has happened it seems as though time has become compressed, contracting and expanding in such a way that I feel as though I had been standing on the edge of something, looked away, and then opened my eyes to find myself on another, distant shore. So it seemed appropriate to turn to something called The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills. Perhaps I have mentioned this before (once or twice or twenty times), but I love Bukowski as much for the titles of his works as I do for the way his words make me feel, and this is no exception.

I must confess that sometimes I feel as though Bukowski's poetry is merely his prose rearranged on the page. (Blasphemy!). (But then it is his prose that I fell in love with first). Some poems make me feel like I am reading a story that he has already written somewhere else, about talking to his editor or drinking in a bar or sleeping with a woman (or several) or going to the racetrack to place some bets (sometimes all of the above). About conversations over the telephone or over a beer. But then you find something that moves along with some rhythm of its own, some inner music that belongs to itself completely.

to be continued.