Poetry Has Been Used to

Poetry has been used to evoke a variety of emotions and life experiences. The epic poems of history transformed into structured sonnets and the form continues to evolve. In recent time there emerged a new type of poetry that resisted strict structure in preference of a sort of stream of consciousness. Charles Bukowski's "Are you drinking?" is an example of subverting a genre by taking a short conversational story, ultimately a prose poem, and adding emphasis with line breaks.

Reading this poem evokes every moment that I've felt exhausted -- either by life, or work. Regardless of the obvious differences between my life experiences and those of Bukowski's, his working-man tone effectively conjures up an overall exhaustion that works for anyone of any class. The image of washed up yellow notebook takes on more meaning by adding a hyphen in washed-up.

Already from the first word there is an image evoked of a tired and washed up person and then the words that follow take that impression and apply it to a tattered notebook that Bukowski writes in. This lived in and aged feeling implies that writing is what makes Bukowski who he is, but it is not a glamorous endeavor and is, in fact, just a facet of who he is without any sort of fanfare.

Meeting with his doctor, Bukowski predicts their conversation and it takes on a rote quality laced with the overall weariness that was one his themes. The various injuries and illnesses are catalogued and emphasized by more inventive line breaks. Within the lines "are you drinking?" he will ask/"are you getting your/exercise, your/vitamins?" The line breaks following your makes the emphasis personal not only to the author, but for the reader.

As I read that passage aloud I start to think about my own aches and pain- not only the physical, but also the mental fatigues that flare up every once in a while as a result of nothing so much as life.

Even Bukowski thinks his pains are nothing special, but just the result of life and all of its "fluctuating/factors." The alliteration between the two words brought emphasis out for me and I thought about the myriad little pieces that make up not just my life but the lives of others around me. The horse race that Bukowski remarks upon as meaningless acts as a metaphor for life in general. We are all racing to win, but against the light of eternity, what does any of it mean.

Are there any winners in life? This defeatist thinking is something everyone does; it is something that I have done, but when I step back and see that for myself the horse race is against myself and the race is one when I've reached my own goals. I'm young, however, and the weariness that I've experienced would most likely pale against what Bukowski alludes to throughout the poem in his experiences working in menial jobs for twenty years.

With the conversation between the motel clerk and Bukowski he remarks that he is leaving the horse race because he finds it boring to which the clerk responds, "If you think it's boring / out there," he tells me, "you ougtha be / back here." This acts as a sort of signifier that no matter what position in life, there is the same tedium that afflicts us all. I can think of how many times I've been exhausted from sickness and I.