Love Is a Dog from Hell

Reeling from an unhappy love affair, I picked up a copy of this book after wandering the aisles of Rizzoli's one day in the mid-eighties. I guess the title spoke to my situation, but what I found inside was more than enough to sustain me until the next pair of legs walked by. Since then, I've nurtured a love for almost everything the man has written. Bukowski tells it straight, for better or worse, and often we see the writer himself in the crosshairs more than anyone else.

I have the paperback, and nearly half the corners of the pages are folded down because I read them once a month. Like all volumes of poetry, there are good ones and mediocre ones, but overall it's honest, painful, and beautiful. Rather than drone on, I'll give you a sample, from one of my favorites of this volume:alone with everybodythe flesh covers the bone_ and they put a mind_ in there and_ sometimes a soul,_ and the women break_ vases against the walls_ and the men drink too_ much_ and nobody ever finds the_ one_ but they keep_ looking_ crawling in and out_ of beds._ flesh covers_ the bone and the_ flesh searches_ for more than_ flesh._there's no chance_ at all:_ we are all trapped_ by a singular_ fate._nobody ever finds_ the one._the city dumps fill_ the junkyards fill_ the madhouses fill_ the hospitals fill_ the graveyards fill_ nothing else_ fills.P.S. "How to be a great writer" is honest, and hilarious, if it weren't for the language, I'd have left that one to convince you to buy this.

Take off the rose-colored glasses...return your seats to their upright position...place your head between your knees and prepare for a crash landing. Don't get me wrong: this book is not a diatribe condemning love. We've all read and loved our Byron, but now it's time to step through the looking glass, children. Love may "walk in beauty like the night" but, "Love, Bukowski Style"...asks you to remember that "the night" isn't the best venue for clarity of vision. Bukowski speaks to that other side of love...vitriolic, soul-destroying, perverted, barbaric and insane. All, who have ever loved, will find the words for their feelings...the feelings for their lack of words...in Bukowski's auto-Eros-dissection. Why would I suggest you read this volume of poetry? Why would anyone want to subject themself to such unpleasantries? What kind of sadist am I, that I would ask you to deliberately subject yourself to the pain of love? To know love, is to know the pain of love. Yet for all the pain inherent in love, we seek love again and again. Nothing exercises our gifts of hope and faith more strenuously. Love may be a "dog from hell" to Bukowski, but he is still unable to disguise his want, his need and his hope for more love. Bukowski - alcoholic, misanthrope, barbarian, gutter rat - who writes of love and can still say..."It softens a man."