Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems

Buy it. Read it. Feel it. Love it. And then read it again. Bukowski may be one of my favorite authors, not only for the style and way he writes, but also the raw truth in what he writes. No flitty,embellished, wordy trying-to-make-poerty crap. It's real. And it has actual meaning. You don't have to be a scholar to see how great of a writer he is. And you don't have to be a scholar to understand it. Because he's just like the rest of us, he's human.

Great go-to book whenever I may be feeling down. I read a couple Charles Bukowski poems, and all of a sudden, my life doesn't seem so bad. At all.

great book

Great book, great edition. Has that great book smell

Great read

If you're a Bukowski fan, you can't get enough. Just read it, it can't hurt except your pocket book, and if you're that skeptical go to the library. Is that one says about a great artist/author's work after they're dead? It's redundant and mediocre? It's just like when you like certain music and end-up collecting compilations. This book contains a lot of the old, but some new material and Bukowski carries on from the dead. By all means you should read his earlier works, but all is good too.

Everything Charles Bukowski writes is poetic genius. His sense of humor (if it is even humor) is so realistic and cynical it invokes the raw emotions I wasn't sure I even had. His work, over his writing career, changed as he changed. This dirty old man moves me in ways only a dirty old man should. Sex, drugs, alcohol, women's names he forgets, all of it is simply amazing. If you don't like Bukowski, then I'm not sure you should be allowed to live.

But you should. This posthumous poetry book starts by a killer poem "so you want to be a writer": "If it doesnt come bursting out of you/ in spite of everything/ don't do it./ unless it comes unasked out of your/ heart and your mind and your mouth/ don't do it./ if you have to sit for hours..." and so on, a poem for all those writes who want to "do" it, then just don't. This is Bukowski's 6th poetry book published since his death, and since ECCO announces that it will be publishing more voulmes of uncollected poems, it seems probable that Bukowski's posthumous books of poetry will be greater than those he published in his life. The poems in this book, as well as in the last 6 books, are not really fillers, or second rate poems, they were not published because Bukowski and his publisher, were busy publishing other , more commercial or urgent books. As with all his books since "War all the time" published in 1984 (or even before that one) this book is a novel written in verse. The basic Buk's book is built around his alter ego, Chinasky, adn each book is the (autho) biography of this Chinasky. He writes to poets, writes about his father, mother, women, literary desert, and literary success late in life, working the factories and other underpaid jobs, horses, betting, death, the pleasure of being rich, and the problems of being famous. Each book includes one or more poems on these subjects and in a way they all tell the same story of Chinasky from different angles. I have just finished the first reading of this book, and I have really enjoyed it, not everything is perfect but Buk is still the best american poet ever, even when he is not at his best. If you don't have to read it, don't, but I think you should...

Brilliantly crafted poetry that touches on all aspects of life. Read when you're feeling robust, or when you're falling apart. This guy speaks from his core.

Bukowski is a modern prophet

I loved this poem collection, my first poems from Bukowski. A great and deep read, that inspired me a lot. This collection explores our contemporary mind, what it is to be a reader, but with Bukowski's delicacy and deadpan humour. Do not let you be fool by the lightness of the tone, which is for me a great writing success.

goog book!

Masterpiece