The Pleasures of the Damned

by Charles Bukowski, John Martin (Editor)

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has struck a chord with generations of readers.

Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's “immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human condition” (New York Quarterly). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, American, Philosophy

557 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Henry Charles Bukowski (born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski) was a German-born American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles.It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books

Charles Bukowski was the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, then left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.

Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including Pulp (1994), Screams from the Balcony (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992).

He died of leukemia in San Pedro on March 9, 1994.

Reviews

[Kevin Jared Hosein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought a book of Charles Bukowski's poems a couple days ago. I've read almost all of them. Some people think the guy's a hero, or an antihero, the quintessential drunk poet. He's really just a bitter, offensive guy. That isn't to say that he doesn't have a heart or that he's a bad person. He never put himself out to be better than he was. He was never on some high horse like most people I come across in literary circles. He was always honest. And this made his work great.

Sometimes people watch movies or read books to experience an event, a time or even a culture they just couldn't otherwise. I can open up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and visit the mind of a man with locked-in syndrome. I can visit the passing of the 13th Amendment if I watch Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. And I can get glimpse at the Hawaii landscape in The Descendants. Sure, it's never 100% accurate, but we make of what we perceive, anyway.

Charles Bukowski does something a little different. He writes about the ordinary degenerate, the drunk who can't get out of bed in the morning, the yellow-eyed barfly who can't pay up, and the motel hooker who prefers to be known as a "working girl". I don't know about this life. This culture has never been something that I have been subjected to. I am a straight-laced, teetotaling, money-saving, monogamy-loving, average-endowed young adult male. I have things in my past that can be viewed as depressing but never so much as to call me unfortunate.

In his work, Charles Bukowski creates a dystopia without an apocalypse. It is a dystopia, to me. Lonely smelly diners, one-eyed cats chasing blind mice, husbands of fat wives cheating with even fatter women. It might sound comic, or dare I say, "poetic" but it happens. I'm not a part o that world. But I wouldn't mind taking a stroll into Bukowski's telling of it. There is something deeply moving about wandering into the bottom of the barrel.

Charles Bukowski is overbearingly honest in most of his poetry. It's hardly ever anything that's very well-written. "Well-written" in the sense of those who win the Pulitzer and the Man Booker. But it's always honest, always raw. You know, sometimes in a movie a kid mightn't be such a good writer, but he remembers some critical event in his life and reads it before the class and it subsequently met with thunderous applause? The writing feels like that, to me. Anyone who puts their soul, as filthy as it is, on paper like that deserves the plaudits.

I live in a bubble. I haven't had any real troubles in my life. Not yet. I've been reading Charles Bukowski ever since I was a teen. I think I read his work so I can prepare for whatever can come. And when it happens, I can look at it and say, "Well, this is familiar territory."

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, Charles Bukowski. I'm not even sure where to begin here. I mean, I've read a lot of his poetry from various places in the past, but not as a definitive volume such as this, which is over 500 pages long. I enjoyed many of these poems, but some, not so much. Reading this volume has given me a real insight into the depressing views that he has with the majority of everything in his life. We get given a tour, if you like of things that existed in his life, and how exactly he feels about those things. You really do get the distinct feeling that he feels sorry for himself and honestly, by the end of this book, you'll feel sorry for him too. You realise that Bukowski felt exhausted by humanity itself and really, that got under my skin. I really understood where he was coming from. I'm not sure whether that was because I read sections of this rather quickly without a pause, or maybe, he just happens to have that effect on his readers.

"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire"

Many people think that poetry has to look pretty, look beautiful, and flow easily but they could never be more wrong. Bukowski takes a different approach and it works. He tells it like it is unapologetically, throws in a few "fucks" and then wipes the floor with it, and guess what? It sinks in, and it leaves a lasting impression. I will definitely be reading more of Bukowski's works.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book seems like an autobiography written in verse, not exactly very poetical or very lyrical but sharp. The poems speak about the life so dying of/thirst but what can we do if the gods want it their way...


it
takes
a lot of    

desperation    

dissatisfaction    

and
disillusion    

to write    
a
few
good
poems.    

it’s not
for
everybody    

either to    
write
it
or even to    

read
it.

*

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

[Cerissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just amazing! My favorite poem so far:

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don't swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that they can
never
categorize you.

reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.

[Bogdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bukowski once said to a tv crew that came to interview him
You came too late with too little
He was almost old already
He had a few dozen books behind him
but he only looked forward to what he would write
What he wrote was already consumed by the writing
He never would give readings of his printed poems
unless he was drunk and somehow had to accept the money

You came too late with too little
he said
and I explained why in a 7 page review
when I was sober
But I got too personal there
I ended up writing too much about myself
because I cannot otherwise
If I write anything about Bukowski
I also have to write about myself

He was my factory comrade
Bukowski
I listened to all his recorded works
while working at the lines
in the north of no north

Lately I started relistening to his poems
and I also took this book from the public library
called
The pleasures of the damned

But I work in a better factory now
I don’t pack anything anymore
like ten years ago
I just keep the machinery running

I relisten to Bukowski
and then I listen to Mussorgsky
to Prokofiev and Stravinsky
because I’m a meloman like he was

Comrade Bukowski

I also came to him
too late with too little
And this too I explained
in my 7 page review that I’ve just deleted
but just as well the goodreaders will understand why
the truly good goodreaders will

Now I’m not sober anymore
and the lines flow like the red wine
I drink the wine that my father sent me
from the southeast of my homeland

It is a mediocre wine
the red wine of the temperate plains
from grapes that grew in the garden
next to cucumbers and aubergines
But I always tell my parents on whatsapp
how much I like it

I come from a neighboring village of Herta Müller’s
You should know that
the title of one of her books is erroneously translated to
The land of green plums

It seems that the translator never went to Banat
or never was there in september
when the clusters of ripe violet plums
are breaking the branches of plum trees

Every second household has its little distillery
My father too has one
of copper
He makes a strong țuică
close to sixty degrees
And it’s better than any schnapps or slivovitz
that you might have ever tasted or got drunk on

But this time I don’t sip the ripe plums
I drink the mediocre wine from the garden
With țuică I wouldn't have gotten so far

Bukowski too said in another interview
that if he wrote while drinking whisky
the writing would get bad and overdramatic
in about 10 minutes

If my calculations are right
țuică would give me the chance of only 7 minutes
of not so bad and not so overdramatic writing

But
on beer
wine
you can go on for hours
[...]
Wine is best
red wine

My poor father
He’s the kindness man
I used to hate him

He never knew how to live or drink
and I came to realize that me neither

I don’t hate him anymore
I drink his health
He’s old and sick in my homeland
in the home I grew up in

I see him on whatsapp sometimes
He doesn’t hear me
I wave to him
and listen to what he says
then I say a little something
something that my mother
who’s next to him
has to repeat louder
He nods
But those too are words
that come too late
and are too little

[William Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is only one other author who can do the things to my head and heart that Bukowski does, and that is Raymond Carver. Both of these men have moved me in ways no other authors ever have. Maybe never will.

I've heard all of the arguments against the man himself and by extension of that, his work. However, I disagree with all fo the critics on this front. The man is not a misogynist. He is a philogynist. Has always been. And anyone who reads his work, hears him speak, instead of pigeonholing the work or the man because of some perceived affront in the work or an interview.

There isn't much to say about his poetry that would give new insight. I can't say anything that hasn't been said before. Jean Genet called him America's greatest poet. If I say it, it doesn't matter because Jean Genet has already said it and he's Jean Genet- thief and playwright. My only contention with most other published reviews is that they call him the poet laureate of sour alleys and dark bars, when it seems that Leonard Cohen's observation is more appropos- that he brought everyone down to earth, even the angels.

I can't express in a review what he means to me, other than that he inspired me to make my writing more real, with less contrivance and more heart, to write about where I am and what I feel even if I have to say something vulgar in order to coax the beauty out of it.

For Bukowski

Pull

this is how a real man drinks,
he says.
ya don't nip at it or nurse it,
ya put it down like
a sick dog.
just knock the fucker back.
that's how a real man drinks.
and i have a feeling he isn't talking
to me
but to himself.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pleasures Of The Damned

Charles Bukowski writes that the pleasures of the damned are "limited to brief moments/of happiness:/like the eyes in the look of a dog." The poem gives its name to this 2007 anthology of Bukowski's poetry, prepared by John Martin, Bukowski's long-time friend and editor and the founder of the Black Sparrow Press, which published most of Bukowski's works.

Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1993) was an underground, cult novelist and poet whose reputation has continued to grow since his death. Bukowski is best known for his novels including "Ham on Rye", "Women" and "Factotum" and for the several movies which have been made of his works and life (including "Barfly" featuring a young Mickey Rourke.) But Bukowski also wrote many volumes of poetry, some of which continue to be published posthumously. Martin has culled through over 2000 published poems to produce this anthology of 550 pages and 271 poems, including 20 poems which had not been published earlier.

Known as the "poet of Skid Row", Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany. At the age of three, his family moved to Los Angeles where Bukowski lived for 50 years. As a young and middle aged man, Bukowski led a tattered life which he captures in his poetry. He writes of cheap rooming houses, alcohol, poverty, horse racing, and relationships with women, many of which are of the commercial variety. His poems are in a simple free verse form generally with short lines. They are easy to read. The poetry is tough, raw, vulgar, and gritty. The earlier poems tend to be shorter, imagistic, and autobiographical. The latter poems tend to be longer and frequently are more in the nature of stories or narratives than the earlier writings. As Bukowski aged, he attained a substantial degree of popular success. The latter poems reflect this success and are frequently meditative and tamer than his earlier work. Throughout Bukowski exhibits a sharp, sardonic sense of humor.

Bukowski wrote a great deal and wrote quickly. Thus, his poetry is highly uneven. Many of his poems are pessimistic in tone, focusing on death or suicide. But they also show a certain determination to live and to take the experiences life gives. The poems also emphasize the power of art, its rarity, and the ability it has to redeem even a shabby, sordid, and difficult life.

The preparation of an anthology has certain difficulties which Martin has not always surmounted. First, this anthology, similar to Bukowski's output, is too long and includes too many weak poems. Conversely, readers familiar with Bukowski's poetry will undoubtedly find that some of their favorites are not included in this collection. Poems that I missed included "Love Poem to a Stripper", "To the Whore that took my Poems", "The Beats" and others. The collection is also weighted heavily towards the latter, posthumously published works. These poems are valuable in their meditative quality, and in showing Bukowski facing illness and death and writing until the end. But they lack some of the grit for which he is likely to be best remembered. Thus, the anthology could have been shorter, better selected, and weighted somewhat differently.

With that said, Martin has captured a great deal of Bukowski and his poetry. This book gives readers, especially those new to Bukowski, a feel for his work. It includes in one place many poems that admirers of Bukowski will want to keep and revisit. The book opens and closes with two of Bukowski's best poems. The opening poem "the mockingbird" is a short, violent parable of death and destruction. The penultimate poem in the collection "the bluebird" takes a much different tone, as the seemingly harsh Bukowski tells the reader:

"there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him.
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you."

The best poems in the collection, and in Bukowski's work on the whole, are those which treat of women and sexuality in all their passion, rewards, and dangers. Somewhat less well-known are Bukowski's tributes to musicians, artists and writers. Bukowski loved classical music, and his poems celebrate Hugo Wolf, Verdi, Bruckner, and, in a poem called "closing time", Beethoven. Bukowski writes: "I/admire the verve and gamble/of this composer/now dead for over 100/years,/who's younger and wilder/than you are/than I am."

Other poems celebrate the death of John Fante, a writer that Bukowski greatly admired, together with figures such as Li Po, Sherwood Anderson, Carson McCullers and Van Gogh. In a poem called "the burning of the dream" Bukowski looks back at his days reading in the old downtown Los Angeles Library before its destruction by fire. The poem describes Bukowski's early and extensive reading and the credo he tried to follow as a writer. He states:

"It would take decades of
living and writing
before I would be able to
put down
a sentence that was
anywhere near
what I wanted it to
be."

The poems in the collection do not appear in any particular order; although the poems in which Bukowski describes his cancer and impending death are grouped towards the end. The anthology concludes with a useful alphabetical index of the poems which allows the interested reader to trace each poem to the book in which it first appeared.

Bukowski is not a poet for everyone or for every mood. But I have continued to read and to be moved by his writing for many years. Martin has produced a good anthology of poems by an American outsider.

Robin Friedman

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over 500 pages of poetry -- one man's, yet -- is a tough assignment to many readers, but Bukowski is reader-friendly and fond of the narrative poem, so in this case, not so difficult as it seems.

Of course, some readers may be put off by the persona he developed. I don't know enough about him to say whether it was a phony one or the real life he lived (or, more likely, somewhere in between), but no matter, if you're scared off by 2019-sensitive push buttons like womanizing, drinking, and gambling, you might say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Still, as is true with Hemingway, you've got to seek Buk's inner turtle (hard on the outside, yes, but soup on the inside). He kept it well hidden, but you can't but help but sense the undertones as you read. You know, things like his occasional lapses into sentimentality about the past, his love for classical music, his fondness for literature, his ability to praise lust while coveting love. And all that.

The over 40 years of poetry takes an especially bittersweet turn at the end, where the poems turn to the subject of his cancer and, of course, dying slowly. The juxtaposition of his self-deprecation and braggadocio make his poems interesting throughout, and whether he intended it or not, this makes the final poems directly addressing his approaching demise especially poignant. Braggadocio relents because no one brags in the face of death. Instead, melancholy and philosophy take center stage (which happens to be in a hospital, in this case).

Not much in the way of capital letters here. Extremely short lines, some only one word. This edition includes some uncollected poems, too, seeing light for the first time. If you want to sample some complete poems I shared from the text (with commentary), you can see them...

here

here

and here.

[❀ iro ❀ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled to finish this.

Charles Bukowski is a curious character. His writing is raw, filthy, misanthropic. Sometimes through his poems, he presents himself as a depressed, tortured man, a hopeless romantic even, and other times he is just a bitter, old pervert. Unapologetically so in both cases, I should add.

I enjoyed the poems that felt a little more personal, more vulnerable. The ones that talked about the crippling maw of depression, his upbringing in a poor and abusive home, the melancholy he felt about times long gone, his awe for other writers, the libraries that harbored him, and, of course, his cats.

But let's be honest, half of Bukowski's poems contain a different kind of rawness, one that I felt very icky about. I'm talking about the graphic descriptions of himself fucking his young girlfriends at the ripe age of 55. He made sure we knew that he was old and ugly and famous, while the girls were young and (therefore) beautiful and whores. Most of the women in his poems are over-sexualized, objectified, dehumanized, and of course, in need of a man. If they're young, they're the prized possessions of their husbands and lovers, if they're old, their cursed objects. In the best scenarios, he is the one who fucks them, in the worst, their pathetic victim who goes after them. In all times they're cheating little minxes.

I guess some people like the apparent dichotomy of his character, the unapologetic crudeness of his work. I guess they can see past the blatant sexism and misogyny, but for me some of the things he wrote were just too offensive to enjoy, and knowing that he was an abuser in his real life too, makes it even more difficult.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read nearly all of this on the
toilet.
Hank would've approved.
Really dig the mundane topics he often
wrote about, like a poetic Harvey
Pekar.
Some very clever phrases, and many not-so.

I took issue with much of the formatting, though.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a little
enjambment, when it's in
service to an established rhythm. But the
awkward
and unmotivated
line breaks drove me up the friggin wall sometimes.
All those widows and
orphans.
Pointlessly, and to excess.
Someone told me his editor was responsible
for all that stuff,
so maybe it's not his fault.
I eventually tried to ignore them and just ran the lines
together
on the fly
however they sounded right to
me.

Here's hoping your 4 horse
eventually
came
in,
and that you found yourself
a clean
well-
lighted
place.

[Clare Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread June 2022. “We keep slaying our small dragons, as the big one waits…”

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Work, street-life, being alone, screwing women, race track, east Hollywood, adult book stores, drugs, men beating their wives, death, guns, Mexican prostitutes, the bomb, derelicts, leave me alone, drudgery of life. Strangely addicting to read.

German bar
I had lost the last race big
somebody had stolen my coat
I could feel the flu coming on
and my tires were
low. I went in to get a
beer at the German bar
but the waitress was having a fit
her heart strangled by disappointment
grief and loss.
women get troubled all at once,
you know. I left a tip
and got out.

nobody wins.
ask Caesar.

[Elle · Rating 1 out of 5]

My previous exposure to Charles Bukowski has been an isolated poem or two shared by friends. I loved those poems and thought I would enjoy more of his work. For the most part, I was disappointed. There were one or two poems new to me that I enjoyed, when the subject was social movements and perceptions. But mostly it was just too much bitter, sexist, white male obsessing over his bitter, sexist, white male problems.

[Ju$tin · Rating 5 out of 5]

uhhhh yeah this is one of the best books of poetry I've read.

if you've read some bukowski and you didn't like it i'd suggest picking this up(poetry), or ham on rye(novel), or
hot water music(short stories) or the most beautiful woman in town & other stories(short stories) or south of no north(short stories) and i think you'll change your mind

[Christan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Bukowski... When I'm feeling down, crushed by this heartless world, I turn to you and your utter lack of sentimentality cheers me. You tell it like it is Mr. Bukowski. You leave blood, and tears, and shit streaks behind you... You were a lonely man with a heart of glass and every word you wrote, you wrote for yourself. The ease of your words is so deceptive. I wish I had the courage to be as honest in my own humble scribbles.

Highly recommended.

[Maja Shinigami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn you, Bukowski, why you so good?

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways it's a bit pointless reviewing this book. People either love or hate Bukowski and nothing i say will change anyone's opinion.
Needless to say i love him.
This is a collection of poems across the span of his writing life, some previously uncollected. All the familiar themes are here, skid row, loneliness, poverty, alcohol, loose women and in amongst it all the burning ambition, the secret calling, to write and create and transcend the grim reality of blue collar life.
For me Bukowski gets at the struggle to remain human in an inhuman system, if you can see beauty in a bottle of beer and a whore's fat arse then maybe you're still alive and still human. That's a bigger deal than most people realize.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection that captures Bukowski at his worst, and at his best. The language can be blunt, vicious, mundane and beautiful, and captures a variety of moods, rhythms and visuals. You can see the passion and love Bukowski had for the medium, and how he helped in making modern poetry accessible for everyone.

[Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by saying I totally understand and agree with the hype surrounding Charles Bukowski even if most of said hype is coming from a bunch of adolescents on Tumblr who most likely don't have much life experience or at least don't have enough life experience to sympathize with Mister Bukowski's way of life (not that I am dictating who should or shouldn't read this as I think everyone should!)
Bukowski was like the king of the down and outs, I admire this man so much. His poetry is easy to understand and straight forward, he writes about the everyday, the mundane yet beautiful normality of life. I am absolutely gutted that this book has come to an end because I honestly could have carried on reading a poem here and a poem there forever.
I am a total word nerd and have started a quote book due to the amount of books that were really inspiring me last year and Charles is now taking up a fair portion of it.
This man is not a word-smith or a genius but he is full to the brim with honesty. He loved what he loved and he wanted nothing but to get by. He saw the absolute beauty in things that other people wouldn't give a second glance to. He saw the irony in working hard for money to live to the point of death. He was a man I would have loved to have met.
His poetry has allowed me to connect in a way no other poet has.
There are no airs and graces in his poems. No fancy wording or clever rhymes. He just tells it like it is.
And my favourites are not only the ones that reflect his love of cats (I am a cat lady at heart) but those where he is convinced that he is somehow cheating life by making a living from his poetry, he is astounded that he can actually live a good life just by writing poems.
Well Mister B I want to thank you and tell you that you were deserving of the life you got to lead in the end even if it was a struggle to get there, because your poems wouldn't be the same without those downs. I am glad you lived the way you did and told us all about it. I am glad that beings like you have existed and have breathed a breath of fresh air into verse. Thank you for telling us the truth no matter what.

[крсн · Rating 3 out of 5]

very enjoyable to read out loud, but out of like 350 poems theres like 25 solid ones - he always seems to say something that is common knowledge like hes uncovering the secret of the universe - but thats the point… i guess

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my first rodeo, mogelijk wel mijn laatste. Op een bepaalde leeftijd heb je het wel wat gehad met edgy manchildren. Maar cava, cava, sometimes it hits right

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bukowski's poetry captures all aspects of the seedy underbelly of America. From, alcohol to prostitution Bukowski leaves no stone unturned in his poetry. He is often refereed to as the "dirty old man" of American poetry and after reading this selection of poetry I can see clearly as to why he is deemed so. I didn't care much for the poems that talked about sex or the frivolity of the American dream, but I really enjoyed the poems that touched upon subjects such as life and writing itself. Perhaps my favourite line from his poetry is from his poem entitled "No leaders,please" which discusses the idea of being ever changing in order to "stay out of the clutches of mediocrity".

"reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life
its history
and the present
belong only to
you"

From an outsider's perspective Bukowski may be nothing but a "dirty old man", but upon delving into his poetry I see a very intelligent man who doesn't give two craps about what people say and think of him. He read the greats when he was young including Hemingway who of which is constantly referenced throughout the poems. Bukowski can be strangely comedic on touchy subjects, but he is also dangerously solemn when the idea of existence is discussed, such as in his poem "Mind and heart".

"cry not for me
grieve not for me
read
what
I've written
and forget
about it all"

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This sucks on such a high number of levels, it's almost comical. For starters, this collection seems to have been slapped together without any dates or order to the work. In addition there is a ratio of about 1 decent poem to 15 filler poems.


On to the subject matter itself, Bukowski comes across as a leering, bitter old man. I understand that there is a recent shift toward multiculturalism, but this has not aged well at all. This is some of the creepiest, least poetic work I've ever read. His prosaic style comes across as a diary entry from a bitter teenager, vocabulary included. I love conversational works, but this is conversational to a fault - like do we need the words "cunt" and "ass" on every other page to demonstrate that we write for the average joe? Check out this following, somewhat rape-y excerpt:

"I walked over
And grabbed her on the couch
Ripped her dress up around her face

And I didn't care
Rape or the end of the earth
One more time...

...My cock went in
My cock my god my cock went in..."

This isn't the work of an author who should be celebrated, it is the work of a creepy old man, possibly Donald Trump.

From a canonical standpoint, it is amazing to me that anyone (especially women) would ever read this trash.

[Eslam · Rating 5 out of 5]

read
what I've written
then
forget it
all

The poems of Bukowski in this book may be divided into two stages:

From page 1 - 510 and from 511 - the end.

For the last stage, Charles has reflected on death, his suffering, his illness, on God in an inclusive/ concentrated way .... Bukowski has tried to say it all. I believe he did it.

having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.

cry not for me.

grieve not for me.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because Bukowski is often quoted. I wanted to revel in his brilliance.
I was sadly disappointed, his works are filled with anger, revulsion, spite and profanity; scattered with intermittent gems that are struggling to maintain their luster amidst all the despair.

[Fede]

Unapologetic, authentic, honest, crude, perceptive, ugly and yet, beautiful. Made me want to spend time in a secluded bar on a tuesday morning.

[Gabriela Solis · Rating 4 out of 5]

No hay tipo más insignificante que Bukowski. Esto, por supuesto, es un halago. En su poesía no hay métrica, figuras retóricas rebuscadas, metáforas cuidadosamente compuestas. No hay oficio literario, pero hay todo lo demás: las preguntas fundamentales sobre el amor, el vicio, las pasiones, la traición, la muerte. A Bukowski se le repudia en la madurez. Es de esos escritores que leímos con avidez en la adolescencia y ahora que somos-intelectuales-muy-inteligentes, nos da vergüenza admitir que alguna vez los quisimos. Creo que esa vergüenza no es más que una mezcla de soberbia y de temor, pues regresar a sus poemas es reencontrarse con un tipo que se nos parece bastante: alguien que tiene un trabajo que odia, un vicio que le impide funcionar algunas veces, parejas que lo atormentan. Bukowski era un tipo que lidiaba con todo eso y aun así priorizaba su pasión más impetuosa: la literatura. Escribía siempre, muchísimo, y a pesar de todo. ¿Cuántos de nosotros, delicadas criaturas posmodernas que nos quebramos ante la más mínima adversidad, podemos decir eso? Yo no. Y por eso fui muy feliz leyendo a este tipo, alguien que a pesar de tener todas las probabilidades en su contra, escribió, escribió y escribió y consiguió un puñado (¿alguien aspira a más?) de poemas desgarradores, bellos y vivos. Estos son algunos de mis versos favoritos:
.
.
.
"It was a small enough victory / no songs of braggadocio because / we knew we had won very little from very little, / and that we had fought so hard to be free / just for the simple sweetness of it.”
.
.
.
"The leaders of the past were insufficient, / the leaders of the present are unprepared. / We curl up tightly in our beds at night and wait. / It is a waiting without hope, more like / a prayer for unmerited grace.”
.
.
.
"There’s a bluebird in my heart that/ wants to get out / but I’m too clever, I only let him out / at night sometimes / when everybody is asleep. / I say, I know that you’re there, so don’t be sad.”

[muthuvel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book of poems is a pure madness created by a sickened madman. The truth of madness is what the madness itself is. Madness in men of society are studied and categorized in the field of psychology. I feel that Psychology is all about studying people who fails to fit into a society presuming the overall mass in the society have already attained normalcy curve in the distribution. Those normalcy curve when it becomes too normal to the extent people stopped looking elsewhere, a certain ways and rules and norms to hold to the extent it becomes the very rule destroying out the possibilities of life. Few people are too curious about the base structure and functioning of the things and stuffs around. They either become intellectual genius or called sociopaths by the genius of the crowd.

Although half the poems are about his encounters with women and girls and how he fornicated them and how they fornicated him with life, there's is sense of originality. Irrespective of good or bad, virtuous or evil, less of conformity and more of originality.


"Jack London drinking his life away while
writing of strange and heroic men.

Eugene O’Neill drinking himself oblivious
while writing his dark and poetic
works.

now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,

the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking up,

the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of
thirst."

[cosmina · Rating 5 out of 5]

listen, I’ve lived long enough to become a good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don’t you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you rotten it all fits,
doesn’t it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a piece of shit?

I've read a lot of Charles Bukowski. A lot. But this book made me realize something. I believe Bukowski considered himself to be a very "cheap" person. And that's why he treated people like they were cheap. You can see it in the way he talks about women, fellow writers of his times, love and life. But you can't really blame him. That's who he was. Some of his best poems are in this volume and I know them by heart.

[Aabha Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t quite know if these are poems in the traditional sense. Would they be poems that stand alone? They are more of a poetic narrative continuation of Bukowski’s life. There is a lot that can offend various sensibilities in these pages, the language is sometimes crass and the “message” quite nihilistic. I was hooked. There is beauty and wisdom in Bukowski’s writing, you just have to know how to look.