SOURCE: "Charles Bukowski: Poet in a Ruined Landscape," in The Outsider, Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring, 1963, pp. 62–5.

In the following review of Bukowski's first three collections, Cuscaden discusses how the poet attempts to overcome despair through his verse.

All of Bukowski's major interests and themes are in evidence in his first book, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail: indeed, they are defined in the volume's title. These early poems are not equally successful; too much reliance is placed upon a dated surrealistic technique and in neglecting the use of the first person singular Bukowski fails to employ a strength which gives unity to his later work. Nevertheless, everything is here: the obsession with music (his three books mention Bach, Hugo Wolf, Borodin, Brahms, Chopin, Berlioz, Beethoven) and art (Carot, Daumier, Orozco, Van Gogh), and, most importantly, the sense of a desolate, abandoned world.

In his poem in the first volume entitled...