Charles Bukowski: Selected Poems Literary Elements

The poems are related from a first person subjective perspective.

Because Bukowski wrote in a modernist way, his poems have no form and meter.

No metaphors and similes can be found.

We find alliteration in the line "you look and you look and you look and you can’t believe it;’’ in the poem "a 350 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore’’.

In most of the poems the narrator describes women in a derogatory term, presenting them as all being promiscuous and good for nothing. The ironic thing is that he is always pursuing them, trying to make them sleep with him. In some poems, he even changes his perception about them and calls them beautiful after he slept with them.

The poems are narrative poems.

The poem "a 350 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore’’ is set on a horse race track and inside the narrator’s hotel room.

The tone used in most of the poems is a vulgar and obscene one.

The protagonist in the poem entitled "About my tortured friend, Peter’’, the antagonist is Peter and the protagonist is the narrator.

In the poem entitled "About my very tortured friend, Peter’’, the main conflict is between Peter’s desire to have a comfortable life and his desire to be a writer. According to the narrator, it is impossible to have both and he tries to convince the man about the reality of his words.

The poem entitled "About my tortured friend, Peter’’ reaches its climax when Peter decides to go an buy himself an instrument, hinting that he is giving up writing.

The title of the poem "About my tortured friend, Peter’’, presents the young man in an ironic way. The title is important because it foreshadows the way the narrator will talk and present the young man.

In the beginning of the poem "a 350 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore’’, the narrator claims he is not a poet. He changes his statement after sleeping with a woman, when she asks him what he is doing to earn money.

In the poem entitled ‘’ ’a 350 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore’’ the narrator alludes by drawing a parallel between a horse many believed had no chances of winning and a common whore that every person has the chance to do something with their lives. The only thing they have to do is to want it hard enough and to be willing to fight for it.

In the poem entitled "About my tortured friend, Peter’’, the narrator mentions the "sad music’’ Peter brings with him when he comes to visit the writer. The "sad music’’ is used here as a general term to make reference to the hard life Peter had and the troubles he had to go through.

We find personification in the line "happy wine-bottle,’’

We find a hyperbole in the line "and they all came to her house— /all the cowboys, all the cowboys:’’

We find onomatopoeia in the line "and a bird even flew by cheep cheep,’’.