Post Office
The novel of the same years, where Jane appears as Betty — the fictional telling of the life these poems mourn.
Read our take
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
The collection that carries the elegies for Jane — Bukowski's grief poems for the great love of his rooming-house years.
- 1969
- Elegiac
- Melancholy
- Savage
- autobiographical
- voice-driven
- spare
- intimate
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1969, is the collection where Charles Bukowski's grief for Jane Cooney Baker lives. Jane was the older woman he loved through the 1940s and 1950s — the most important relationship of his early life, and the most destructive; her drinking matched or exceeded his own. She died in 1962, and the elegies he wrote for her are gathered here alongside the other poems of the decade. The title is among the most famous he ever wrote, and the book has stayed in print for more than fifty years. Readers who know Jane as Wanda in the film Barfly, or as Betty in the novel Post Office, meet the real grief behind those characters in these poems.
The story, in more detail
The collection was published the year before John Martin's hundred-dollar-a-month offer freed Bukowski from the post office, and it closes the first long chapter of the life: the rooming houses, the drinking years, and Jane. The Jane poems are unlike anything else in Bukowski — direct, wounded, and without the armor of the later persona. The rest of the collection runs the register of his 1960s work, from flat city anecdote to lament, and the title phrase has escaped the book the way only a few of his titles have.
Themes and analysis
The dress on an arm
In “For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough,” the dress can still be held, but it cannot restore the person whose movement once gave it life. The repeated act of picking it up makes grief return to the same material evidence. Against that certainty, the speaker piles up appeals to gods and other possible supports, as though multiplying them might overcome a single loss. The closing return to the dress on his arm breaks that hope. Its tangible presence measures the woman’s absence; the poem offers neither a successful bargain nor a consoling explanation.
The swan in the current
“Spring Swan” interrupts the promise of seasonal renewal with a death already present in the water. The approach of people carrying picnic bags brings another expectation into the scene: a Sunday should be available for pleasure. Yet the poem never shows those visitors responding to the swan. It is the speaker who feels ashamed and walks away, judging his own departure even as he makes it. His final possessive description of the bird preserves a private attachment after that retreat. The tension lies between his sense of responsibility toward the dead bird and his unwillingness to stay with it.
Why we recommend it
The Jane elegies
The most direct and defenseless poems Bukowski wrote, for the person whose loss he never finished writing about.
The end of the first life
Published a year before he left the post office to write full time — the last collection of the rooming-house years.
Poetry beside the fictional versions
The poems about Jane can be compared with the transformed relationships in the novels and screenplay without treating those characters as exact portraits.
What this book explores
Timeline
1962
Jane Cooney Baker dies. Bukowski writes about her loss repeatedly in the years that follow.
1969
Black Sparrow Press publishes the collection.
1970
Bukowski leaves the post office on John Martin's monthly stipend and begins Post Office, where Jane becomes Betty.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Black Sparrow Press
- 1969
- Paperback
- Ecco
- 9780876850053
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
The selected volume covering the same era, for readers who want the early period in one book.
Read our take
Love Is a Dog from Hell
The other great Bukowski collection about love — desire and wreckage where this one is grief.
Read our takeThe Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills: frequently asked questions
What is The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills about?
Love and grief, more directly than anywhere else in Charles Bukowski's poetry. The 1969 collection gathers his poems of the 1960s, including the elegies for Jane Cooney Baker, the woman he loved through the 1940s and 1950s, who died in 1962.
Who was Jane Cooney Baker?
An older woman Bukowski met in a Los Angeles bar and loved, on and off, for more than a decade — the most important relationship of his early life. Her drinking matched his own, and her death in 1962 marked him permanently. She appears as Betty in Post Office and as Wanda in the film Barfly.
Is this a good introduction to Bukowski's poetry?
It is one of the two usual doors, with Love Is a Dog from Hell. Start here if you want the grief and tenderness under the persona; start with Love Is a Dog from Hell if you want the desire and wreckage.
When was it published?
Black Sparrow Press published it in 1969, the year before Bukowski left the post office to write full time. Ecco keeps it in print.
Where does the title come from?
It is Bukowski's own line — one of the most famous phrases he wrote, and the reason many readers pick this collection up first.
Which poem is the famous one?
“For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough” — the elegy for Jane Cooney Baker, and one of the few Bukowski poems that circulates whole rather than as a quoted line.
How large was the first edition?
153 pages, with a numbered issue of 250 copies signed on the colophon, bound in green cloth over printed boards.
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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 The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
PoetryCharles Bukowski, 1969Used 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, publisher, and chronology of the Jane years.
3Charles Bukowski: books and chapbooks (Verdant Press checklist)
WebsiteUsed forBibliographic details checked against the checklist.
4Charles Bukowski
BiographyReaktion Books, 2012Used forJane Cooney Baker's place in the life and the collection's grief poems.
5The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills — edition record
Official recordOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
6For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough — poem transcription
WebsitePoemHunter (third-party transcription)Used forComplete poem transcription; not an original-edition facsimile or independent biographical evidence.
7Spring Swan — English poem transcription
WebsitePoeticous (third-party transcription)Used forComplete English poem; the site's collection and year tags are not used for bibliography.
8The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills — collection contents
WebsiteCharles Bukowski Poem and Story DatabaseUsed forIndependent membership check: the full-titled Jane poem on page 32 and Spring Swan on page 51.
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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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