What do you think?
Rate this book
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories
Virtually everything Black Sparrow publishes is worthwhile, but without Bukowski, whose 40-odd books kept Black Sparrow's bread buttered right up until his death in 1994, none of the rest of it would be possible. Fortunately, "Buk" left plenty of unpublished manuscript behind that, judging from this culling from it, is of a piece with the published stuff. That is, it consists of quasi-autobiographical poems and stories. The poems' lines are only one to six words long, and the stories' sentences aren't much longer. Poems and stories relay the adventures and attitudes, at all stages of his life, of loafer and lumpen intellectual Henry Chinaski. They are occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally laughable because Henry and his women and pals are such a bunch of slobs, and occasionally as boring as Henry and company claim their lives are. And, to tell the truth, they are effortlessly, magnetically readable, especially if you are susceptible to their bargain-basement existentialist charm. Plenty are. Ray Olson
402 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 1996
197 people are currently reading
3715 people want to read
About the author
Charles Bukowski
854 books29.9k followersHenry 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
Read
January 1, 2021
Betting on the Muse - 100 poems and 10 short stories collected here, previously unpublished works by the one and only Bukowski. The range covers Hank's entire life, beginning with such poems as The Monkey, recounting the time an organ grinder wandered into the neighborhood when Chuck was a kid to a short snapping turtle of a poem called challenge in the dark, where Bu is face-to-face with death.
Assuming anyone reading my words is a reader or writer, I'd like to share two Bukowski poems to serve as inspiration to keep the power of imagination and creativity going in your own life, no matter how tough the odds. Here goes:
betting on the muse
Jimmy Foxx died an alcoholic
in a skidrow hotel
room.
Beau Jack ending up shining
shoes,
just where he
began.
there are dozens, hundreds,
more, maybe
thousands more.
being an athlete grown old
is one of the cruelest of
fates,
to be replaced by others,
to no longer hear the
cheers and the plaudits,
to no longer be
recognized,
just to be an old man
like other old
men.
to almost not believe it
yourself,
to check the scrapbook
with the yellowing
pages.
there you are,
smiling;
there you are,
victorious;
there you are,
young.
the crowd has other
heroes.
the crowd never
dies,
never grows
old
but the crowd often
forgets.
now the telephone doesn't ring,
the young girls are
gone,
the party is
over.
this is why I chose
to be a
writer.
if you're worth just
half-a-damn
you can keep your
hustle going
until the last minute
of the last
day.
you can keep
getting better instead
of worse,
you can still keep
hitting them over the
wall.
through darkness, war,
good and bad
luck
you keep it going,
hitting them out,
the flashing lightning
of the word,
beating life at life,
and death too late to
truly win
against
you.
the laughing heart
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank
submission.
be on the watch
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you
chances.
know them, take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death
in life,
sometimes,
and the more often you
learn to do it,
the more light there will
be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in
you.
August 5, 2016
i used to drink alot and smoke crack. once was hanging out with some young girl in west philly and she saw this book in my backpack. nef was her name i think. near 51st and master. i told her it wasn't a book of love poems. she wanted it anyway. i gave it to her and often think of crackheads in west philly reading this.
April 14, 2023
this felt like sharing a lifetime with bukowski
"your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in
you."
"your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in
you."
January 14, 2021
Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you
when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,
I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.
but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the
others, I was the same,
they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.
maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.
I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.
I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,
I didn't have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'
'it's all right' I tell
him.
He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him
he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.
(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)
I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.
(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)
The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt.
and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.
I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.
let it enfold you
when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,
I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.
but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the
others, I was the same,
they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.
maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.
I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.
I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,
I didn't have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'
'it's all right' I tell
him.
He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him
he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.
(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)
I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.
(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)
The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt.
and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.
I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.
June 6, 2009
Wow. I am writing this about 30 seconds after finishing the last poem on the last page of 'Betting On The Muse'. I had no idea that a book published after his death, composed of random unpublished poetry and short stories could be so powerful. This book is truly moving, it grasped me from the very start.
Fans of Bukowski novels will rejoice in the short story involving our favorite drunkard, Chinaski. Many of the other stories and poems come more from Bukowski's alter-ego then himself. The book almost seems to hold a chronological order, covering his misfit childhood, his druken days, and progressing into his old age. However, the truly powerful poems are those Bukowski wrote about his older life. The 60's, the 70's. Hearing a man who was one so powerful that nothing could get him down, no boss, no back alley bar fight, no broad, succumb to his demons is very touching. Some of the last poems are very obviously written very closely before his death; quite chilling.
I would recommend this book to almost anyone with an open mind. Read Post Office, Factotum, and Ham On Rye, and then attack this one.
Fans of Bukowski novels will rejoice in the short story involving our favorite drunkard, Chinaski. Many of the other stories and poems come more from Bukowski's alter-ego then himself. The book almost seems to hold a chronological order, covering his misfit childhood, his druken days, and progressing into his old age. However, the truly powerful poems are those Bukowski wrote about his older life. The 60's, the 70's. Hearing a man who was one so powerful that nothing could get him down, no boss, no back alley bar fight, no broad, succumb to his demons is very touching. Some of the last poems are very obviously written very closely before his death; quite chilling.
I would recommend this book to almost anyone with an open mind. Read Post Office, Factotum, and Ham On Rye, and then attack this one.
September 2, 2024
I adored this collection.
Bukowski’s writing is gritty and real. At no point does he soften the punches of his poetry.
Overflowing with subject-matters of alcoholism, poverty, squalor, adultery, and gambling; Bukowski’s work does not shy from the challenging or taboo, but at the same time there will be moments of utter-peace and serenity captured in his poems. It would be easier to be completely corrupted by angst or optimism, but Bukowski flits back and forth from stanza to stanza.
My copy is dog-eared and annotated with favourite poems and lines, but I could undoubtedly re-read the entire collection and find a new selection of favourites.
Standout quotes (to select only a few)-
‘The young girls ran with the rich guys with cars (even in bad times there were rich guys)’
‘Being an athlete grown old is one of the cruelest of fates’
‘empty beer and wine bottles gathering, the ashtrays runneth over, twice-told jokes are told again’
‘Flowers were for pansies’
Bukowski’s writing is gritty and real. At no point does he soften the punches of his poetry.
Overflowing with subject-matters of alcoholism, poverty, squalor, adultery, and gambling; Bukowski’s work does not shy from the challenging or taboo, but at the same time there will be moments of utter-peace and serenity captured in his poems. It would be easier to be completely corrupted by angst or optimism, but Bukowski flits back and forth from stanza to stanza.
My copy is dog-eared and annotated with favourite poems and lines, but I could undoubtedly re-read the entire collection and find a new selection of favourites.
Standout quotes (to select only a few)-
‘The young girls ran with the rich guys with cars (even in bad times there were rich guys)’
‘Being an athlete grown old is one of the cruelest of fates’
‘empty beer and wine bottles gathering, the ashtrays runneth over, twice-told jokes are told again’
‘Flowers were for pansies’
August 8, 2015
Fantastic as always. Some of my favourite lines:
with agony stuffed in my
pockets
and the sun
behind a film of
pain.
they and we are in the
trenches
of hell,
throwing mud at the
fates.
I knew exactly what I
was doing: I was
doing nothing.
because I knew there
was nothing
to do.
February 24, 2017
"this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever."
Bukowski's poetry never gets old. He continues to be my favorite poet.
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever."
Bukowski's poetry never gets old. He continues to be my favorite poet.
December 3, 2017
...pozerám si svoje staré fotky a pýtam sa to isté.
January 5, 2022
a good book
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable
May 1, 2025
"I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me."
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me."
August 13, 2025
„a good poem can frame agony and hang it on a wall”
August 7, 2025
Mal wieder Bukowski aber diesmal anders. Diesmal merkt man er ist älter geworden, er hat sich ein bisschen verändert, und trotzdem schafft er es mit wunderschöner Sprache in diesem Buch mein Herz zu gewinnen.
Das Buch besteht aus Short Stories und Poems und wow wirklich, ich habe so viele Lieblingsstellen in diesem Buch. Wahrscheinlich werde ich es im Laufe des Jahres noch einmal lesen und überall am Buchrand mir Notizen machen.
Meine Lieblingspoems waren: „let it enfold you“, „the laughing heart“, “the misanthrope”, „avoiding humanity“ und „the rare good moment“.
Meine Lieblings-Short-Story war:
„WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVING, LAUGHING GIRL IN THE GINGHAM DRESS?“
Hier meine Persönliche lieblings stelle und wahrscheinlich, der bekannteste Ausschnitt aus
„let it enfold you“:
„I changed jobs and cities, I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, English accents, Spain, France, Italy, walnuts and the color orange.
algebra angered me, opera sickened me, Charlie Chaplin was a fake
and flowers were for pansies.
peace and happiness were to me signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak and addled mind.
but as I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of
women—it gradually began to occur to me
that I wasn’t different.“
Das ganze Poem ist neun Seiten lang und wirklich eine der schönsten Sachen, die ich jemals gelesen habe.
Dieses Buch ist für mich ganz klar 5🌟 und auf einer Stufe mit „Love Is A Dog From Hell“ oder „Ham On Rye“. Bukowski schreibt so schön und einzigartig, wie ich es sonst von niemandem jemals erwarten könnte.
Honourable Mention:
„betting on the muse“ und „betting on now“ – auch zwei wundervolle Poems.
Das Buch besteht aus Short Stories und Poems und wow wirklich, ich habe so viele Lieblingsstellen in diesem Buch. Wahrscheinlich werde ich es im Laufe des Jahres noch einmal lesen und überall am Buchrand mir Notizen machen.
Meine Lieblingspoems waren: „let it enfold you“, „the laughing heart“, “the misanthrope”, „avoiding humanity“ und „the rare good moment“.
Meine Lieblings-Short-Story war:
„WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVING, LAUGHING GIRL IN THE GINGHAM DRESS?“
Hier meine Persönliche lieblings stelle und wahrscheinlich, der bekannteste Ausschnitt aus
„let it enfold you“:
„I changed jobs and cities, I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, English accents, Spain, France, Italy, walnuts and the color orange.
algebra angered me, opera sickened me, Charlie Chaplin was a fake
and flowers were for pansies.
peace and happiness were to me signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak and addled mind.
but as I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of
women—it gradually began to occur to me
that I wasn’t different.“
Das ganze Poem ist neun Seiten lang und wirklich eine der schönsten Sachen, die ich jemals gelesen habe.
Dieses Buch ist für mich ganz klar 5🌟 und auf einer Stufe mit „Love Is A Dog From Hell“ oder „Ham On Rye“. Bukowski schreibt so schön und einzigartig, wie ich es sonst von niemandem jemals erwarten könnte.
Honourable Mention:
„betting on the muse“ und „betting on now“ – auch zwei wundervolle Poems.
May 17, 2013
This Bukowski is a mix of short (very short) stories and poems--reading them I would assume a mix of older material and material from shortly from before Hank passed away. The poems he writes on his Mac are so quaint--as if he is talking to the machine as well as using it--reveling in it's "trash can" and it's newness when compared to his oldness. He writes often about the track (adding that odd poetic quality to something filthy and very unpoetic) and often writes of his "6 cats" (this charms me of course when thinking of this great literary lion, a total sucker for his animals). He touches on his illness (which is hard to read--I always think it must be terrible to know you are fading away--knowledge of death and time to consider it are two terrible things in my mind). There is such a difference here--of the braggadocio of his early years where his life was probably as much in danger as it is in these later years, after leukemia had hit him--but what a difference. Perhaps the difference of actually feeling death breathe at your door. His early work to me is seldom sad--usually dark and touching but not sad in this way--an old boxer shadow punching at something he can never defeat. Still, the poems are as touching as able to bring life to their story as is always the case with Bukowski. His short stories are wonderful as well and share the quality of taking ordinary moments and making them a story worth telling and worth reading, his particular gift.
October 31, 2012
The illusion is that you are simply
Reading this poem
The reality is that this is
More than a
Poem.
This is a beggar's knife.
This is a tulip.
This is a soldier marching
Through Madrid.
This is you on your
Death bed.
This is Li Po laughing
Underground.
This is not a god-damned
Poem.
This is a horse asleep.
A butterfly in
Your brain.
This is the devil's
Circus.
You are not reading this
On a page.
The page is reading
You.
Feel it?
It's like a cobra.
It's a hungry eagle
Circling the room
This is not a poem.
Poems are dull.
They make you
Sleep.
These words force you
To a new
madness.
You have been blessed,
You have been pushed
Into a
Blinding area of
Light.
The elephant dreams
With you
Now.
The curve of space
Bends and
Laughs .
You can die now.
You can die now as
People were meant to
Die:
Great,
Victorious,
Hearing the music,
Being the music,
Roaring,
Roaring,
Roaring.
Reading this poem
The reality is that this is
More than a
Poem.
This is a beggar's knife.
This is a tulip.
This is a soldier marching
Through Madrid.
This is you on your
Death bed.
This is Li Po laughing
Underground.
This is not a god-damned
Poem.
This is a horse asleep.
A butterfly in
Your brain.
This is the devil's
Circus.
You are not reading this
On a page.
The page is reading
You.
Feel it?
It's like a cobra.
It's a hungry eagle
Circling the room
This is not a poem.
Poems are dull.
They make you
Sleep.
These words force you
To a new
madness.
You have been blessed,
You have been pushed
Into a
Blinding area of
Light.
The elephant dreams
With you
Now.
The curve of space
Bends and
Laughs .
You can die now.
You can die now as
People were meant to
Die:
Great,
Victorious,
Hearing the music,
Being the music,
Roaring,
Roaring,
Roaring.
November 5, 2011
I freely admit that poetry in general has never appealed to me as much as it does many other avid readers. There are some poems I've come across over the years that I truly love, but I just don't get in the "poetry mood" very often. I decided to give a Bukowski collection a shot because he has been so often recommended to me, and I am glad I did. Bukowski has a straight-to-the-point, no-bullshit style that appeals to me. There isn't the slightest hint of pretension. Some of these poems are pretty damn good, while some are not; the result is an average overall score. However, I liked my first taste of Bukowski's work enough that I'll definitely check out more in the future.
October 23, 2009
a fellow worker at the library read it. So I started to read it and
got addicted to Bukowski's poems. Some are funny, some suck, and
you could not make up the race track, drinks, women and crazy men
who fight with Buk.
I think his style is his style. Not Williams or Ginsberg but definitely Charles Bukowski writing becomes infecting. After I read him I want to
write a million poems. He gets to the point, rough & ready to do
battle with the poetry gods and he does.
got addicted to Bukowski's poems. Some are funny, some suck, and
you could not make up the race track, drinks, women and crazy men
who fight with Buk.
I think his style is his style. Not Williams or Ginsberg but definitely Charles Bukowski writing becomes infecting. After I read him I want to
write a million poems. He gets to the point, rough & ready to do
battle with the poetry gods and he does.
July 21, 2008
I love Bukowski, because sometimes, though rarely, when you're up to your eyeballs in misery, hopelessness, and the horse shit of life, he'll reveal suddenly a glimmer, a short line of poetry of something he finds beautiful in the world. However, this collection had a few that turned my stomach and turned me away from Bukowski for a week or so.
January 8, 2016
This collection is a little different for Bukowski. A little less angry, more at peace with his old age. Still better than most anyone, but not my very favorite Buk.
February 9, 2020
This was my first work of Bukowski I read, I will say there were pieces that I was absolutely amazed at. However, it felt few and far between. The second half of the book had more substance then the first half in my opinion. Some of my favorites were, "Let it Enfold You," "The Suicide," and "Writing" I will definitely be reading more Bukowski in the future, he has a very conversationalist way of writing which I enjoy very much.
January 29, 2023
The first posthumous collection I’ve read and probably why I found it so… underwhelming.
July 31, 2024
Late stage bukowski that helped me in my transition to late stage adulthood.
September 29, 2024
Good, read it like a narrative book was a portrait of a life and had impact, funny and sad and some of them were extra special.
February 20, 2025
"the rain falls
as the shadow gets ready to fall again."
as the shadow gets ready to fall again."
January 22, 2022
ugh. I tried to make a project of reading a Bukowski poem a day just because Tom Waits read a very beautiful one in a video I watched and I thought "maybe there's something to it?"
But, no. Definitely too cynical and in love with his own bad behaviors to appeal to me at this stage. Abandoned.
But, no. Definitely too cynical and in love with his own bad behaviors to appeal to me at this stage. Abandoned.
March 16, 2025
If you've read any Bukowski before you'll know the story of his life, lived out in all his writings, from drunken, gambling, addled, street fighter in and out of jail, in and out of bed with various women to drunken, addled, middle age where the eventual success of his writing bought him a less hand-to-mouth existence, but essentially his passions remained the same. This 400 page book of poetry and short stories was published post-humously but doesn't at all feel like is the leftovers being churned out to earn a buck. The poems, in free verse with a good ear for vocabulary and line length are loosely chronologically arranged ending on his musings on imminent death. I loved a couple grumbling about losing poems he'd almost completed on his computer "it's like reeling in/ a fish/ and then it/ escapes the hook/ just as you reach/ for it." You can picture him there with a beer beside him banging away at his Mac at 3am and cursing at it. Many of the poems are seemingly quickly written and I think should be read in the same manner as he was a prolific writer, as if you are in a conversation alongside him on a bar stool. Often you'll finish it and forget it, but a line or an image here and there will come back to you.
The short stories I liked, snapshots of the underbelly of his Los Angeles largely and tales from its racetracks and bars, and the stories and poems being jumbled up together works well. If you've read his novels the same semi-autobiographical character is here throughout. If you enjoy spending a bit of time in his company fine, if you don't, then don't bother with this.
The short stories I liked, snapshots of the underbelly of his Los Angeles largely and tales from its racetracks and bars, and the stories and poems being jumbled up together works well. If you've read his novels the same semi-autobiographical character is here throughout. If you enjoy spending a bit of time in his company fine, if you don't, then don't bother with this.
October 11, 2011
This is the first collection of both poetry and short stories that I've read by Bukowski and probably one of his more consistent works. The short stories are all amusing and the poetry is pretty good as well. There is a lot of fluctuation with the quality of the poems, however, with some of them being examples of his best work and some being forgettable to outright bad.
The end of this collection features Bukowski's meditations on his inevitable death. This section alone makes the collection worth checking out and kind of summarizes his overall outlook pretty well.
You've got the typical facets of Bukowski here, womanizing, horse race betting, consistent literary references, amusing bar-based anecdotes, etc.
A lot of worthwhile stuff here for Bukowski fans as well as people looking to be introduced to his stuff (it also contains one of my favorite Bukowski poems, [i]The Laughing Heart[/i] *this may not italicize, haha).
Recommended.
The end of this collection features Bukowski's meditations on his inevitable death. This section alone makes the collection worth checking out and kind of summarizes his overall outlook pretty well.
You've got the typical facets of Bukowski here, womanizing, horse race betting, consistent literary references, amusing bar-based anecdotes, etc.
A lot of worthwhile stuff here for Bukowski fans as well as people looking to be introduced to his stuff (it also contains one of my favorite Bukowski poems, [i]The Laughing Heart[/i] *this may not italicize, haha).
Recommended.
July 12, 2016
Such a huge bible of a book that's kinda hard to rate but majority of the work within the covers moved me in some way and some of them made me go whaaa?! so that amounts to 4.
Here are some of the unbelievably best:
it's difficult for them
The ending! Genius.
what they do and what they
are and what they want
and what they say and what
they write
has no interest for me
and, unfortunately for
them, no interest to most others
living, dying or about to be
born, uh
huh.
neon
My-kinda-stuff
confession of a genius
One of his diary-like moments.
I noticed the
sycophants and
weaklings were
writing poetry.
so,
I tried that
too.
traffic report
I'm so polite I'd make a nun puke.
putting it to bed
Would make an excellent punk song.
epilogue
So good. And Fante guest appears.
let it enfold
One of the best poems ever.
Here are some of the unbelievably best:
it's difficult for them
The ending! Genius.
what they do and what they
are and what they want
and what they say and what
they write
has no interest for me
and, unfortunately for
them, no interest to most others
living, dying or about to be
born, uh
huh.
neon
My-kinda-stuff
confession of a genius
One of his diary-like moments.
I noticed the
sycophants and
weaklings were
writing poetry.
so,
I tried that
too.
traffic report
I'm so polite I'd make a nun puke.
putting it to bed
Would make an excellent punk song.
epilogue
So good. And Fante guest appears.
let it enfold
One of the best poems ever.
July 2, 2016
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.”
No comments needed anymore see above!
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.”
No comments needed anymore see above!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews