Poetry recommendations

[toinfinity]

Trying to find some poets that match the style I like, i.e Bukowski (that's pretty much it at the moment haha)
Can anyone help me out?

Also if anyone wants to ask for recs or give them, maybe we can use this thread?

[RiverNotch]

Busy season! I should get back to the workshops soon enough, but school's starting to get hot. But here:
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/showthread.php?tid=7500 - Just read through the poems here. Some you'll like, a lot you'll love; that's how I got through all this, at least. Introduced me to Louise Gluck, this thread, and she's pretty great, and now I think "The Wild Iris" is my favorite book of poetry ever.
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=64 - Also a good place to get introduced to peeps.
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=68 - This too.
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=46 - And this.

Now, answering your question more specifically, I'm not too familiar with Bukowski, but I'm finding it a good rule of thumb to radiate outward (that is, start with the most popular, most formal, most classical stuff, then inch your way to the less conventional) and to try as many flavors as you can (thus all the threads above). If no one ever manages to give you a good enough answer there, just reading on will eventually lead you down the right path.
But Gluck (ahem, u with an umlaut) is great. The Wild Iris, that is great. And right now I'm a bit obsessed with TS Elliot, but I'm not sure that's the thing you're looking for.

APRIL

No one's despair is like my despair--

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.

Do you suppose I care
if you speak to one another?
But I mean you to know
I expected better of two creatures
who were given minds: if not
that you would actually care for each other
at least that you would understand
grief is distributed
between you, among all your kind, for me
to know you, as deep blue
marks the wild scilla, white
the wood violet.

[Todd]

Try Nick Flynn's collection Some Ether. He's not exactly like Bukowski but his style has some similarities

The problem with trying to find someone like Bukowski is even if some of the work of other people's work is similar to his, it will be uneven. So let's try some individual poems (they should all be on the internet or maybe even this site.

Sharon Olds: Sex Without Love
Kim Addonizzo: Chicken
Marge Piercy: Joy Road and Livernois
Nick Flynn: Cartoon Physics Part 1
Nick Flynn: Cartoon Physics Part 2
Mark Strand: Moontan
Louise Gluck: Gretel in Darkness
Carolyn Forche: Selective Service
Stephen Dobbins: How to Like It

Or now that I think of it, Go to this link and see if there is something you like:

http://pigpenpoetry.com/showthread.php?tid=7500

Some of the poems I mentioned are probably there as well.

[NobodyNothing]

Speaking of Gluck, I love the opening poem "The Wild Iris" from her Leider cycle book of poetry under the same name...



               The Wild Iris

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember. 

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater. 



I always loved this stanza...

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

...it was like the poetic definition of a state of acute anxiety to me.

Anyway...