Books like Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Bukowski the fiction writer and Bukowski the poet always seemed to be two different people. I've read a handful of his poems over the years and recognized a fire in him that is totally lacking from his novel work. In his poems, there lies a confident drunk, asleep at the wheel of life, seamlessly floating on by, content with distraction and apathy. In his fiction, there's an emptiness that's so passive, it's hardly a story at all.This is the first volume of his poetry that I've read from start to finish and, at points, it was like reading poetry for the first time and realizing what the medium is capable of. Other times, it was like listening to someone's drunk grandfather repeat what he did yesterday in his sad life. Bukowski writes about the same thing many times over and he wants you to know that he drinks, fucks, gambles and doesn't care about any of it.He never comes off as arrogant, which someone younger would maybe try. Instead, he lists his vices as a laundry list with no power to them, as if they're just there to keep him going. He's no tortured artist. He's just a man getting by, too tired to regret in large doses. He's one long shrug, spouting off some of the most true things you've ever known.Some poems are just small things he observed, so small that you're mad that he wrote a poem about it. Other poems have a furious passion for living a shitty life and it's brilliant. It's really hit or miss, and it's that way in blocks. It'll be three poems in a row that make you think Bukowski was given the keys of life and then it'll be three poems of Bukowski wasting your time like an old drunk at a bar.When he's good, he's goddamn glorious. When he's bad, he's miserable.In life and in poetry.