Beauti - Ful and Other Long Poems [Paperback]

Charles Bukowski (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Wormwood Review Pr (December 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935390138
• ISBN-13: 978-0935390131
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,549,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but don't go out of your way., May 20, 2005

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Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beauti - Ful and Other Long Poems (Paperback)

Charles Bukowski, Beauti-Ful and Other Long Poems (Wormwood Review, 1988)

Wormwood review puts out lovely single-author collections as issues of the magazine every once in a while. This is the second I've come across (the first being Lyn Lifshin's Parade), and in all honesty I could probably cut large sections of the Lifshin review and paste them into this one without needing to change anything. The two books are almost identical; solidly-constructed limited-edition chapbooks on paper of somewhat surprising quality, with decent, if not consistently excellent, work from each of the authors represented. The name of the collection is something of a misnomer; I was expecting these forty-seven pages to contain three, maybe four, pieces. The poems may be slightly longer than the Bukowski norm (there's nothing here that fits on a single page), but nothing you can't find a good number of examples of, lengthwise, in any big collection since Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. The average quality of the pieces themselves is good, but there are few surprises (and you've likely seen a number of these in other collections since; "Number 2 Pencil," especially, stands out). With the current cost of out-of-print Bukowskis (as I write this, the cheapest one to be found on Amazon is going for $89.25; you can find one at (...)), only collectors are going to want to go after this one right now. You can wait till the market dies down or, if you've got a pretty comprehensive selection of the books he released on Black Sparrow between 1987 and 1994, you've likely got almost all of these pieces anyway. *** ½