Defend the Poet

Defending Charles Bukowski is an easy task. Or it would be an easy task if I knew how and from where he was being attacked. I personally like Bukowski, and “Dinosauria, We” so I have no reason to attack him and can’t easily imagine a reason why anyone would. I guess the only thing I could see people attacking him for is having such a dark and grim perspective on the world and the future of humanity. In the poem Dinosauria, We he describes the world as he sees it and how bad things have gotten. He talks about how everyone of us is born into this terrible hopeless world that is falling faster and faster each day into a spiral of destruction. He talks about how the environment’s health is being forgotten and how college degrees are losing value as the years go by. He talks about how the world around us is turning us into violent hateful creatures. He talks about the state of the legal and health care systems and how ridicules it is that its cheaper to die than to be treated at a hospital or plead guilty rather than pay lawyers to fight your case. He talks about the direction the world is headed and almost predicts an apocalypse in the near future. I can see why some people might not like to hear this but the fact is that everything he mentions about the general state of the world now isn’t too far off from the reality of things. I’m not sure how much I agree with his prophecy that soon all hell will break loose but I can’t say that the idea is completely ridicules and unbelievable. Charles Bukowski might be pessimistic but he has every right to be so.