Formalist Criticism: "75 million dollars" & Allusion

     This poem revolves around a direct allusion to Pablo Picasso.  Picasso is an enormously famous artist known for his volatile personality and disregard for tradition.  It makes sense that Bukowski would admire such a man, as he shares many of the same traits.  Bukowski discusses the immortality that Picasso possesses as he reads about his 75 million dollar estate being divided up in the newpaper.
     In one of the final stanzas Bukowski also alludes to Henry Miller, another artist/writer rule-breaker who died in 1980.  Bukowski draws himself into a club of disenfranchised misfits and geniuses by sympathizing with and comparing himself to these two famous men in a poem about the legacy one can leave behind after death.  It could very well have been a purposeful move on Bukowski's part to publish this poem in what matters most is how well you walk through the fire, as it is a collection of poems he set aside to be published after his death.
     Bukowski utilizes allusions to other writers and artists in many of his poems.  For example he refers to "Frieda" (Kahlo), Huxley, and Lawrence on page 332 in "what's it all mean?" and Beethoven on page 346.