Poetic Justice

This is a characterization essay I wrote for my English Lit class in college. We had to pick someone famous, alive or dead, and create a piece that read into their character. I chose Charles Bukowski.

I have always been interested in the Literary Arts.  I love to write poetry, and read and analyze great pieces of work from various authors.   I have a great fondness for the writers of the classics, like Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger.  But, although I have such tremendous admiration for them, I have never been more awestruck than when I read Charles Bukowski. 

Charles Bukowski came from a very modest beginning.  He grew up in Germany, but moved to America shortly after the First World War.  The move took him to Los Angeles, California, where his life began to fall apart. He had a physically and verbally abusive father, and a vacant mother.  He was constantly teased and tormented by his peers, because of his thick German accent, and the ‘sissy’ clothes he was made to wear. 

Soon into his teens, a friend introduced him to alcohol.  Alcohol, he said, “is going to help me for a long time.” This started the writer’s addiction and dependency with the bottle.  Charles Bukowski was a self-admitted fall-down drunk.  He had many love affairs, but made few friends.  Outside of the relationships with the various women, he was a recluse -- a loner.  So, he buried his mind into his work, writing some of the realest, rawest, most honest poetry you can find.  He took everything he wrote from his own life experiences.  He wrote about the people he met, jobs he had, dreams he had, as well as some colorful angry rants about life and society in general.  

When perusing Charles Bukowski’s history, he may not seem like a very honorable man.  He was a womanizer and a belligerent drunk.  But out of the fire comes the phoenix.  In his lifetime, he published 16 collections of poetry, and was the subject of countless biographies.  

Whenever I sit down to write poetry or short stories, I am constantly drawing on my own life experiences.  They are the inspiration and the ‘muse’ for everything I’ve ever written.  Because of Charles Bukowski, I have learned to keep an open mind when it comes to sharing my experiences through writing.  I can only hope that my writing continues to stay as real as it is.  The example that was set by Charles Bukowski will always be the source of my courage to write about my life, as real as it gets.