Analysis of Beasts Pounding Through Time

Charles Bukowski 1920 (Andernach) – 1994 (San Pedro)



Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.


Scheme abbBcdBbeBfghIjbkIlbfminBbopqrstimi
Poetic Form Tetractys  (29%)
Metre 111011011 101011 0110110101100 00010011010 10111011001 1010010111 00010011010 101011101 10101 00010011010 1101001 1110101111 1101101010010 000100 100101001010101 10101001111 1100011101 000100 1101011 10010110 101 100101101110110 000100000100 1011001 00010011010 1110 110 001 100 11 110 1100 111110 10110111011 0100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,043
Words 182
Sentences 1
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 35
Lines Amount 35
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 895
Words per stanza (avg) 182
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Submitted by RobertHaigh on July 29, 2020

Modified on April 21, 2023

54 sec read
112

Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and beautiful economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles.[4] His work addresses the ordinary lives of rich Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. more…

All Charles Bukowski poems | Charles Bukowski Books

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