What I love about Bukowski is what others mostly hate: he is offensive, appalling, and unrefined. But underneath all the unrelenting cheekiness, candid sexual musings, and impertinent rudeness is a tender, honest, and resonating meditation on people's multifaceted, ever-changing, complicated emotions (no matter how dirty). On Love is packed with sex, women, and booze (as expected of him) but they're also intermingled with thoughts on love in its many forms — paternal, platonic, romantic — and it is also love in memories, love lost and forgotten, love as an idea, and love in its most disgusting, selfish, hilarious, solitary, ridiculous and affecting sentences and punctuation marks which, I feel, sets Bukowski aside with other poets. Bukowski's lyricism is unapologetic, sentimental and this is one of his most lovely collections.

(His poem an acceptance slip made me shed a few tears).

A couple of unforgettable lines —

** "I look to my left and see a man picking his nose;
he slides the residue under a
chair; quite true, I think, there's your
truth, and there's your love:
snot hardening under a chair during
hot nights when hell comes up and simply
spits all over
you."
— from ALL THE LOVE OF ME GOES OUT TO HER (A.M.)

** "Linda, you brought it to me,
when you take it away
do it slowly and easily
make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in
my life, amen."
— from THE SHOWER

** "she wants me to write a love poem
but I think if people
can't love each other's
assholes

and farts and shits and terrible parts
just like they love
the good parts,
that ain't complete love."
— from THE BEST LOVE POEM I CAN WRITE AT THE MOMENT

Personal favourites: layover, shoes, for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough, for Jane, notice, my real love in Athens, poem to my daughter, 2 carnations, the best love poem I can write at the moment, love poem to Marina, the first love, a love poem, for all the women I know, a definition, an acceptance slip, one for old snaggle-tooth, I made a mistake, yes, we get along, eulogy, the strong man, the blue bird, the dressmaker, confessions and all the love of me goes out to her (for A.M.) ( )