Point of View

The point-of-view of You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense is first-person. By and large every poem is told from the subject position of the author's frequent alter-ego Chinaski.

Chinaski is a hard-drinking, misogynistic poet in his middle age. He has grown from a raging id to a slightly detached ego. Much of the collection is dedicated to his analyzing of past debaucheries and excesses. The gist of experience has allowed Chinaski to understand the meaning of these jags. In particular, our poet understands acutely the meaning of his decade-long hiatus from writing. His ten years of drinking and traveling, discussed in several works, were education for his career as a poet. The voice of every one of these pieces is brusque, authoritative, confrontational, and weary, a portrait of a hard-liver past his prime.

There are two distinct exceptions regarding the identity...