Love Is a Dog from Hell
Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense
Charles Bukowski
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense
The mid-1980s poems: the San Pedro years, the cats, the childhood resurfacing, and the loneliness given its full name in the title.
- 1986
- Melancholy
- Wry
- Spare
- autobiographical
- voice-driven
- intimate
- spare
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeYou Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1986, collects Charles Bukowski's poems from the settled San Pedro years — the better house, the marriage to Linda Lee, the computer still a few years off — without the settling reaching the poems' subjects. Childhood and the violent father resurface; the cats arrive as recurring characters; the racetrack, the drinking and the dead friends hold their places. The title is the collection's whole argument: solitude not as a complaint but as a working condition, chosen and defended.
The story, in more detail
The collection sits between the desire-driven middle poetry and the openly elegiac late books. Its strongest poems look backward — at the Depression childhood, the father, the early rooming houses — with the steadiness of a man no longer inside them, and sideways at the small durable comforts of the late life: the cats, the classical music on the radio, the typewriter at night.
Why we recommend it
The tender collection
The armor comes off further here than anywhere in the poetry: childhood, cats, dead friends, and the loneliness named in the title.
Late-life Bukowski at full strength
Settled circumstances sharpened rather than dulled the poems; the material just moved from the bars to the memory.
What this book explores
Timeline
1980
Bukowski moves to San Pedro, the setting and circumstance of the collection.
1986
Black Sparrow Press publishes the collection.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Black Sparrow Press
- 1986
- Paperback
- Ecco
- 2007
- 9780061542497
Reader reviews
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You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense: frequently asked questions
What is You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense about?
Charles Bukowski's 1986 collection gathers poems from his settled San Pedro years: the childhood and the violent father resurfacing in memory, the cats of the late life, the racetrack, dead friends, and solitude treated as a working condition rather than a complaint.
Is this a good first Bukowski poetry collection?
It works, though Love Is a Dog from Hell is the more common entry. Start here if the quieter, more inward Bukowski appeals more than the barroom one.
Why are there so many cats in the collection?
Bukowski shared the San Pedro house with a shifting population of cats and loved them without reservation — in these poems they carry the tenderness the persona withheld elsewhere.
When was the collection published?
Black Sparrow Press published it in 1986; Ecco keeps it in print.
Does the title mean Bukowski endorsed loneliness?
The title sentence describes solitude as something that eventually makes sense — the collection treats being alone as the condition his writing life required and defended, not as despair.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense
NovelCharles Bukowski, 1986Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Charles Bukowski (Poetry Foundation)
WebsiteUsed forBiographical and bibliographic backbone: the career arc, the Black Sparrow relationship, and the book's place in it.
3Charles Bukowski timeline (bukowski.net)
WebsiteUsed forPublication dates, publishers, and chronology checked against the bukowski.net timeline.
4Charles Bukowski: books and chapbooks (Verdant Press checklist)
WebsiteUsed forBibliographic details cross-checked against the Verdant Press checklist.
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The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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