“Play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit” by Charles Bukowski
Play The Piano Drunk Like A Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit by Charles Bukowski is small book of big poems. They’re short and shit directly in your head. All of Bukowski’s works have a quality of being from a generation that lived harder, but also from a man who cared less because he saw the futility in everything. His tombstone reads “Don’t Try.” Yet, the poems in Play The Piano Drunk… take your mind to his world of seedy bars, faithless women, and desolate factories, within six words. It’s a book for anyone who knows what it’s like to waste away a job while being strangled with a crucifix. If you’ve never read a work by Bukowski, or even heard of him, pick up this book, pick up any of his books.
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Bukowski's poems often read like prose broken up into short lines with the occasional flash of lyrical brilliance, such as in the classic "fire station" included here. His early poems were a bit too fanciful and abstract, his later ones a bit mundane and repetitive. This collection is from his prime and no ink is wasted in it.
Robert, alley-oop well played. Bukowski often drew the comparison between poets and boxers. His style of using short lines is akin to the fighter throwing punches, working them up in combination before slamming the haymaker. Bukowski was a back alley brawler, but he throws his lines like a chess player."Fire Station," ain't that a classic!
