Charles Bukowski is a modern poet. Like Hemingway, he manages to personify the excess of a generation born around the turn of the 20th century. He was a man of excess and passion, which often led him to explore the grimy underbelly of society, which only served to make him more critical of himself and his society. In his poetry, Bukowski offers a raw and radical view of experience which serves to draw his readers into the life of a poet.
Bukowski sets up the conversation with his audience as if he has something to prove, daring them to argue and even sometimes antagonizing his readers. Usually making himself the narrator of his poems, Bukowski opens himself up as a sacrifice to his art. He invites people to criticize him, the same as he is actively criticizing them for participating in the zeitgeist of their age. In his poem "8 count," Bukowski clearly expresses an aggressive resentment of his profession; he wants his readers to know how much he suffers to provide them with some entertainment. He tries to elicit a reaction from his audience in many ways throughout his professional career, including profanity, explicit sexual content, violence, and, in "8 count," taunting.
Critics have argued that Bukowski is a misogynist. They claim that his treatment of women throughout his poetry and in his personal life reflects a serious deviance from the acceptable relationship between the sexes. Regardless of the legitimacy of these criticisms, Bukowski does include a lot of explicit content, resentment, and outright hatred toward women in his texts, but one must remember the context of his words. Usually he writes about women with whom he has some sort of relationship, often in the past. Like Hemingway, Bukowski makes no claims upon women as a whole, but he does condemn the ethics of individuals with whom he's had relations. It's imperative to consider the full context of his words before passing judgement because Bukowski does not pretend to be instructing his readers in an ethical dilemma; he's merely expressing how he feels after a lifetime of failed relationships.
