Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of Los Angeles. He left home after his father read some of his stories and went berserk, destroying his output and throwing his possessions out onto the lawn, a lawn that the young Bukowski had to mow weekly and would be beaten for if the grass wasn't perfectly cut. Bukowski was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany. He died on March 9, 1994 in San Pedro, California. He was a German American poet, novelist, and story writer. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. He had a bad history with hospitals; he had to undergo three treatments for removal of separate skin cancers, treatments for tuberculosis, cataracts, and chemotherapy for leukemia. He married his second wife Linda Lee and she stayed with him till he died and didn’t remarry. Bukowski’s poem Girlfriends is about how he will not let any of his past lovers enter his life. He refuses to see them when they arrive out of state because it would be too awkward and pointless. “I know some people who can watch the same movie more than once” he compares his past lovers to a movie and says he isn’t one of those people who replay movies over and over again. He knows the plot, beginning, and ending, everything. So there was no point in repeating history if he knows he cannot rewrite it.
The literary device most often used in this poem is metaphor. Bukowski often compares the women in his past to other things. “I know some people who can watch the same movie more than once” he states that he knows people who let their past lovers in their life again. “Not me. Once I know the plot once I know the ending whether it's happy or unhappy or just plain dumb, then for me that movie is finished, forever.” Bukowski doesn’t want “another yesterday” coming in his life because that was the past and it’s a past he very well knows the ending to. Charles