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carolllllll's review against another edition
4.0
Book quote: "Humanity claws at me as persistently now as in the beginning.
I was not born to be one with them yet here I am with only the thought of death and that final separation to comfort me."
Book review: I haven't read Bukowski in a while so this was a refresher. It was a slow start for me, I couldn't relate to anything so I just kept on reading. Towards the middle and to the end, it got quite beautiful.
At the end section of the book, old age and sickness were mentioned a little and it kind of brought forward the fact that yeah he's dead. When you've read someone's work a lot and admired and thought of their poems, you somehow forget that the person behind those words is not as immortal.
The last poem called "Mind and Heart" was touching and beautiful. I loved it.
I was not born to be one with them yet here I am with only the thought of death and that final separation to comfort me."
Book review: I haven't read Bukowski in a while so this was a refresher. It was a slow start for me, I couldn't relate to anything so I just kept on reading. Towards the middle and to the end, it got quite beautiful.
At the end section of the book, old age and sickness were mentioned a little and it kind of brought forward the fact that yeah he's dead. When you've read someone's work a lot and admired and thought of their poems, you somehow forget that the person behind those words is not as immortal.
The last poem called "Mind and Heart" was touching and beautiful. I loved it.
thesubmariner's review
5.0
Personal favorites in no particular order:
Everything hurts
Mind and Heart
Have we come to this
Don't call me, i'll call you
After many nights
This machine is a fountain
The Real Thing
Moving toward the Dark
Everything hurts
Mind and Heart
Have we come to this
Don't call me, i'll call you
After many nights
This machine is a fountain
The Real Thing
Moving toward the Dark
xterminal's review
3.0
Charles Bukowski, Come on In!: New Poems (Ecco, 2006)
The more of Buk's posthumous poetry I read, the more I wonder why anyone buys it. I've long held the hypothesis that he published the best bits while he was still alive (and really, let's face it, Bukowski's pinnacle as a poet came during the sixties and early seventies, after which he spent more time working on, and improving, his prose style), and what was left over was meant solely as a moneymaking scheme; he did, after all, realize that he'd reached that critical mass where the fans would buy anything. He could write something about watching the cat walk across the room, chop it up into one or two-word lines, and people would buy it. Or, for that matter, he could write about writing.
“almost ever since I began writing
decades ago
I have been dogged by
whisperers and gossips
who have proclaimed
daily
weekly
yearly
that
I can't write anymore
that now
I slip
and
fall.”
(“I have continued regardless”)
Every artist runs the risk of becoming a self-parody; it seems that the more influential the artist, the greater the risk, or maybe that's just because we have so many examples of bad imitation of that artist. This is a perfect example of a bad Bukowski imitator...except that it's the man himself.
That said, there are still flashes of brilliance every once in a while, and no matter what else you can say about the guy, one thing Bukowski's poems have always had is the kind of readability that few other poets possess; yeah, readability is nothing in and of itself most of the time (I'm resisting the urge here to call Buk the Dan Brown of poetry), but in a genre as legendarily obtuse as poetry, however undeserved the tag may be, one has to grudgingly admit that readability for its own sake must carry at least some cache. If it gets more people reading poetry, it's got to be worthwhile on some level. ***
The more of Buk's posthumous poetry I read, the more I wonder why anyone buys it. I've long held the hypothesis that he published the best bits while he was still alive (and really, let's face it, Bukowski's pinnacle as a poet came during the sixties and early seventies, after which he spent more time working on, and improving, his prose style), and what was left over was meant solely as a moneymaking scheme; he did, after all, realize that he'd reached that critical mass where the fans would buy anything. He could write something about watching the cat walk across the room, chop it up into one or two-word lines, and people would buy it. Or, for that matter, he could write about writing.
“almost ever since I began writing
decades ago
I have been dogged by
whisperers and gossips
who have proclaimed
daily
weekly
yearly
that
I can't write anymore
that now
I slip
and
fall.”
(“I have continued regardless”)
Every artist runs the risk of becoming a self-parody; it seems that the more influential the artist, the greater the risk, or maybe that's just because we have so many examples of bad imitation of that artist. This is a perfect example of a bad Bukowski imitator...except that it's the man himself.
That said, there are still flashes of brilliance every once in a while, and no matter what else you can say about the guy, one thing Bukowski's poems have always had is the kind of readability that few other poets possess; yeah, readability is nothing in and of itself most of the time (I'm resisting the urge here to call Buk the Dan Brown of poetry), but in a genre as legendarily obtuse as poetry, however undeserved the tag may be, one has to grudgingly admit that readability for its own sake must carry at least some cache. If it gets more people reading poetry, it's got to be worthwhile on some level. ***
pamshenanigans's review
4.0
"the best poems
it seems to me
are written out of
an ultimate
need.
and once the poem is
written,
the only need
after that
is to write
another."
This poem is just one of the many brilliant poems in this book. I love how it can go from mellow to very serious with only spaces and lines in between. I love how raw and honest his poems are. the whole book felt like a conversation between Bukowski and I. (Although, isn't that how it has always been and should be when it comes to reading?) It felt like a secret between two old friends.
This is my first Bukowski read and will definitely not be the last.
it seems to me
are written out of
an ultimate
need.
and once the poem is
written,
the only need
after that
is to write
another."
This poem is just one of the many brilliant poems in this book. I love how it can go from mellow to very serious with only spaces and lines in between. I love how raw and honest his poems are. the whole book felt like a conversation between Bukowski and I. (Although, isn't that how it has always been and should be when it comes to reading?) It felt like a secret between two old friends.
This is my first Bukowski read and will definitely not be the last.
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