Love Is a Dog from Hell
The 1977 collection covering the Linda King years — the same subject in one four-year stretch.
Read our take
On Love
Fifty years of love poems in 224 pages, published two weeks before Valentine's Day 2016 — though the contents are far harder than that suggests.
- 2016
- Savage
- Melancholy
- Wry
- autobiographical
- voice-driven
- sensual
- filthy
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeOn Love, published by Ecco on 2 February 2016 and edited by Abel Debritto, gathers Charles Bukowski's poetry and prose about love, lust and desire across 224 pages. Ecco published it two weeks before Valentine's Day. The selection alternates between tenderness and cruelty, and holds as much about the failure of love as about love itself. Read in sequence the poems track his own history — Jane Cooney Baker, Linda King, Linda Lee Beighle — without the book ever announcing that it is doing so.
The story, in more detail
Love in Bukowski is rarely separable from drinking, money and the racetrack, so the collected love poems are not a romance anthology. The tenderness is real and so is the contempt, sometimes in the same poem. What holds the volume together is that he never pretends the two are reconcilable.
Themes and analysis
The room in memory
In “layover,” the repeated account of lovemaking holds a morning still while the city outside keeps working and trading. Bottle collecting, newspaper sales and cars give that intimacy an economic setting: the lovers’ apparent escape depends on a world they have briefly stepped out of. The carpet, cigarettes and photograph make the memory particular rather than an abstract celebration of love. Paris is a picture in the room, not its established location; the remembered happiness belongs to this temporary shelter.
Passing the hotel window
The poem makes years of separation feel only a sentence away, but verbal closeness cannot recover the absent person. Passing the hotel at two fixed hours replaces the opening’s absorbed intimacy with routine. The alley remains recognizable; the woman’s whereabouts do not. The train image suggests life suspended rather than completed, and the ending stays a question. Memory can repeatedly reach the window without entering the earlier relationship: the speaker’s continuing movement through the city exposes how little that familiar address can restore.
Why we recommend it
Fifty years of one subject
Love poems from across the entire body of work, rather than the single period Love Is a Dog from Hell covers.
Neither romantic nor cynical
The selection keeps both registers, which is more accurate to the poems than either would be alone.
Attachment viewed from several moments
The selection allows changes in feeling and relationships to emerge across pieces rather than reducing love to a single position.
What this book explores
Timeline
1950s–1993
The span of the love poems the volume draws on.
2016
Ecco publishes On Love on 2 February.
2017
Ecco publishes the paperback edition of the love anthology.
Book editions
- Hardcover
- Ecco
- 2016
- 9780062396037
- Paperback
- Ecco
- 2017
- 9780062420732
Reader reviews
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On Love: frequently asked questions
What is On Love?
A collection of Charles Bukowski's poems and prose about love, lust and desire, published by Ecco in February 2016 and edited by Abel Debritto. It runs 224 pages.
How is it different from Love Is a Dog from Hell?
That 1977 collection covers four years, 1974 to 1977. This one selects from the whole career, so the same subject arrives in many different registers.
Is it romantic?
Not reliably. The selection keeps the tenderness and the contempt side by side, sometimes within a single poem.
Who edited it?
Abel Debritto, who assembled all four of the thematic volumes and the restored edition Storm for the Living and the Dead.
When was it published?
2 February 2016 — two weeks before Valentine's Day, which reads as deliberate.
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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 On Love, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1On Love
PoetryCharles Bukowski, 2016Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Charles Bukowski timeline (bukowski.net)
WebsiteUsed forPublication year, editor and edition details.
3Charles Bukowski
BiographyReaktion Books, 2012Used forCareer context for the material the volume draws on.
4Charles Bukowski (Poetry Foundation)
WebsiteUsed forThe poetry and prose the selection is made from.
5Charles Bukowski: books and chapbooks (Verdant Press checklist)
WebsiteUsed forBibliographic details checked against the checklist.
6On Love — authorized ebook preview
PoetryEcco (preview distributed by Everand), 2016Used forPrimary text included as part of the documented record for On Love.
i
Why these sources are here
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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