You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense

Yes, say what you will. Bukowski is often obscene, sexist, disparaging, drunk, and unshaven. He's been called shameful, disgusting, untalented, crude, and a waste of time. I might agree with some of these but his enduring and unparalleled strength was, and is, honesty. You don't come away wondering what he or his life were about. He doesn't clean it up or seek your pleasure. His life is in these pages. And, it was a wonderful life and a book full of unexpectedly honest insight and sensitivity.

So blunt and brash and so pathetic and mundane. He could write the hardest lines for one poem and then shitposting in the next. I love it.

Another good collection of Charles Bukowski's poetry. It didn't have any poems to match some of my favourites from the later collections The Last Night of the Earth or Betting on the Muse but it did have some gold (and silver) nuggets. There are also a fair few 'lesser' poems but no outright clunkers. Thematically, it is quite typical of Bukowski's output and so is as good a place as any to start, or continue, reading his poetry.

Personal favourites include: 'Beasts Bounding Through Time', 'Trashcan Lives', 'No Help for That', 'Darkness', 'O Tempora! O Mores!', 'The Wine of Forever', 'What Am I Doing?', 'Nervous People', 'How is Your Heart?' and 'It's Ours'.

Great stuff! Entertaining, hilarious, gut wrenching and in flashes perfectly relatable, all at different times and sometimes all together. Bukowski manages to capture the glory in being a bum, makes it a little less bad, and I'm looking forward to reading more about the horse races, the gambling, the whores and drunken nights behind the type writer.

A fairly middling outing for Bukowski. Definitely not as bad as Septuagenarian Stew and not as good as Sifting Through Madness For The Word, The Line, The Way. I'm not sure there will ever be a collection of poetry by Bukowski that's as definitive as his great novel, Ham On Rye, but in the great scheme of things perhaps it doesn't matter. After all, I'd imagine if you put together all of his best poems in one book (including the immortal "Fire Station") it still wouldn't be definitive just because Bukowski spread his inspiration over so much more than just one book of poems. He wrote thousands of poems so when a book comes out it's just another snippet of that and what you get more often than not is poetry done the right way in a field show more so packed with poetry done the wrong way. show less

one-third of this
collection
is great.
another third
is pretty great
with
endings that fizzle.
the remaining are
fairly
useless.

I
say
this
only
because
Bukowski
would
just
love
that
a
28
year
old
peon
would
put
his
poems
into
fractions.

I rarely enjoy poetry this much. Bukowski was probably a fun guy to be around, most of the time.