If I were Charles Bukowski I would stay the way I am, reading his poetry you could only imagine the life he had lived. His life contained of insecurity, booze, whores and cheap hotels. That is how it is described in his poem "How Is Heart."
Charles has been through a lot, but lets say he did improve on his lifestyle, got a decent job, lived in a nice apartment and had food and money, it wouldn't make him the poet he is known for today. The poet he is known for is the one who stayed content with his life. If he wasn't poor, wasn't finding himself waking up in cheap hotels or next to a prostitute he wouldn't have wrote about it and gotten to the place he is now where people look up to him as an American poet. His writing also made him famous and his writing was mainly about alcohol, relationships with women and work.
In my personal life I can relate to this poem in two ways. The first way is insecurity, in the last verse of the poem it is written " and to walk across the floor to an old dresser with a cracked mirror- see myself, ugly, grinning at it all." I have a lot of insecurities and looking in the mirror makes everything worse. No one is perfect and I think we all have to accept the way we look and if it is possible to change something then you can put your mind to it but if you can't then you have to just learn to live with it. Charles felt he was ugly, I feel like that too sometimes about my body but I just have to accept it or do something. The second way I relate to this poem is difficulties I've been through. In last line which reads, " What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." As I mentioned in the comment section, I can relate to this line because I have myself not gone through what Charles has gone through, but something different. I think every human being has gone through situations experiencing excruciating pain mentally and physically but they've made it through the fire. Its like the saying "I've been through hell," but you made it. I have gone through the fire is also an example of an idiom. The line means to go through danger or difficulties. An example of difficulty I've gone through is bullying. I've done things I'm not proud of, on the Internet and I've gotten bullied for it for almost two years in high school. I've made it though on my own and my friends have helped me along the way. I think without whatever happened, I wouldn't be as strong as I am today, which makes me who I am today...
More reasons to which why Charles should stay content, or we would may have not known a Charles Bukowski.
I really like that you began to explore the relationship between art (in this case poetry) and pain/angst of the the artist. I tend to agree with you that if he had been striving for more perhaps his work would not resonate with so many readers. Be careful about rushing your work, and please find a new font. I can barely read this one. Maybe a whole line space between paragraphs too. :)
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