A review of Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window
[In the excerpt below, Newton notes Bukowski's equation of individualism with isolation.]
Poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window is not Bukowski's best book; it is too hurried. But it does contain all his familiar subjects: his drinking, writing, and sex; he haunts dirty bars, cheap hotel rooms, and the night streets of Los Angeles. The classic Bukowski characters are the whores, bums, and the solid bartenders. All this occurs at the brink of modern society: Los Angeles. In fact, Los Angeles is very important in his poems, because the poet who takes this bewildering location as his home will almost surely confront the modern complexity in his poems. Bukowski presents everyone as modern man who has come to know everything, yet at the same time he is so very ugly. Bukowski is certainly ugly. He is even miserable enough to believe that, just as every place is becomjng like Los Angeles, everyone is becoming worldly and ugly like him. In "The Millionaire" just such a change takes place:
Look at him
a withered man
they say he was worth millions
Another of Bukowski's theories is the notion of individualism which seems to mean isolation, and another is that sex is forever entangled with demented love.
"Big Bastard with a Sword" is the best passage in the book. In this poem Bukowski succeeds in sustaining his special view of the world, with the best of his terse style:
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