Customer Reviews

Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's called "bone pallace ballet" so it's not a book of poems to read to your girlfriend under a willow tree at four in the afternoon, unless of course, she's got a wicked sense of humor. This book's hilarious, but chillingly realistic accounts of city life leave the reader dazed. It's like a high without the chemicals.

He doesn't follow any modern patterns of poetry, but he reserves images for when they're necessary. We can only sense what he wants us to sense, when he wants us to feel it, see it, hear it, taste it. Bukowski takes you on a wild ride, leads you around, and in the end, you thank him for it.

And if you're a writer out there, read "The Word"! I haven't read it in a while, but I still remember certain lines, an image I could never have thought of, but he throws it in there, and it looks effortless like an acrobat, "It can't hold your cigarette for you" and then the rush of "getting it down, getting it down, getting it down." Read it, twice, you'll love it.

This book is only a shadow of what Bukowski can do. I was very dissapointed with his wife being so hell bent on releasing his unpublished work. These poems are all ones that he would have never released had he been alive. They have no charm and show nothing of his talent. His wife I guess thought they were good enough to be released. I beg to differ. If you want a good collection of his poems from the last years of his life check out Betting on the muse which is an amazing book.

To read Sir Charles is to read about life without the pompous filter you get with most other pap. This installment is no different from anything else from Lord Chinaski.

Bukowski in his last years. Rare to see a writer grapple with aging and death in such a matter of fact way. There are some true gems in this one. .... Bone Palace is a little repetitive, but you can't be shocked to find Bukowski holding forth on booze, women, horses, hypocrites, and writing. What else did he ever write about? And really, what more can you ask for?

Lets face it, if you love Bukowski, you love Bukowski. Period. If you don't, well, then stick to Mickey Spilane or Mickey Mouse -- or how about Danielle Steele?

This is the man older and wiser and, yes, often less desperate than when he was a rail thin bum living the good hard life of the bottle. Still the poems are honest and fine with Buk's signiture tight, clean lines.

I'll be honest. This one sat on my shelf for a couple of years before I picked it up and read it. I was afraid it might be crap. Listen up folks: It's not. Instead it's one more volley from heaven, one more burst of life from the best poet since Whitman.

If you love Bukowski then any Buk is good Buk. If you don't love Bukowski then sit and spin,brother, sit and spin.

READ BUKOWSKI AND LIVE!

I have never read a Bukowski book before, nor have I every really read anything like it. It is sort of hard to try to sum up this book because it is all over the place. It follows Bukowski's life through the first few sections, then sort of drifts off as he becomes more and more disolusioned with the world and his place in it. Since I have not read any of his other books, I cannot really compare, but I was impressed with what I read. I felt I connected with what he was trying to say. "Our public hell creates a private hell and there is no hell except on earth." He did seem to ramble more in the later poems, but I think this showed his confusion becoming more and more abundant. I feel that Bukowski is a very interesting character himself. He deludes himself with alcohol and writing, but he is totally aware of his delusionment and cares not to change it. Some would look at this as grim and sad, but I was just glad to see someone else who had a similar outlook on life as I do sometimes. I also enjoyed the mood of the book. While reading it, I was transported into Bukowski's head and his way of thinking. While reading, everything he said or thought seemed right. Not until later, when I pondered his ideas outside of the context of his book, did I realize I did not agree with some things that he thought. He has a strange way of manipulating through his writing, making what he is thinking seem to be the absolute truth at the time. My favorite "poem" in the book is about Bukowski encountering a man who could play an instrument very well. He saw him while in Europe to promote his own writing. When the man played, they looked at each other and Bukowski admitted the player was the better man and both knew it. This is how he thinks during much of the book. Who knows what the other man was thinking? He probably did not even notice Bukowski, but due to his feelings about the world he thought the other guy was the better man. Because of the grimmness of it, I do not believe this is a book for everyone. I think there are also things in the book that would offend alot of people and they would pass off the vulgarity as pervertish instead of realizing the truth he is trying to show. I liked this book overall because it was truthful. He did not sugar coat anything. He was just telling how he thinks it is and it left me with a feeling of trying to do that myself.

Bone Palace Ballet is another amazing book of prose from the drunkest of the drunken poets, the most beaten of the beats, Charles Bukowski.
To say he was an influential writer, is like saying Dr. M.L. King was a mediocre speaker. Bukowski inspired more people to pick up a pen or sit down at a typewriter than possibly any other writer or poet in the short history of our country. Bone Palace Ballet is actually one of his milder books compared to a lot of his work. So people who have been scared off by his hard living and harder writing, can appreciate this collection.
Although not his best work by far, it's worth a read (as is anything he ever did). It's a quick read despite it's hefty length, so you'd be better off borrowing this one from a friend. That's the only problem with poetry books, is the high cost combined with the short time it takes to read them. But I would still rather see you buy this than borrow the crap that's on the New York Times best seller list. Now go out and find his other work.

Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet (Black Sparrow, 1997)

The main problem with the fact that Charles Bukowski has now published more work after his death than he did during the first sixty years of his life is that, well, not all of it is all that wonderful (and, really, the quality of the doorstops that were coming out in the seven or eight years before his death wasn't exactly stellar, either). This is not to say that some really, really good Buk books haven't come out posthumously-- The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship quickly became one of my favorite Buk reads-- but Bone Palace Ballet is not one of them. It's a lot like those last few books published before his death in that there are a number of places where you can see why it is that Buk was able to become the sole American poet able to make a comfortable living solely off writing the stuff, the kind of talent that makes Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame or War All the Time a book that, when you're done with it, will stay with you for the rest of your life. But those times are few and far between (though to be fair, there's a lot more "few and far between" in a 363-page book, pretty much by definition, than there's going to be in one of the seventy-page wonders most poets turn out about twenty percent as frequently as Buk). Worth reading for established fans, but newbies will want to go father back in the canon for their first approach. ***

not a bad collection
you have to figure that there a wealth of stuff still out theer yet to be released. this book is proof of that
some good stuff here
its easy to decide that this is the stuff he chose not to release but i like to think he just hadnt gotten around to it yet

I'm a songwriter who never considered a pre-nuptual agreement. However...I'm calling my lawyer as I write. If my wife ever tries to publish some poor piece of crap that I scribbled on a bar napkin while intoxicated...why I'll...I'll...SUE!!! There's obviously a piece of Bukowski in this book, albeit a small piece, and if that's enough for his fans to gobble up then so be it. Me, I love the guy too much to spit on his memory. Sounded to me like Linda even finished a few of them herself. Please read EVERYTHING else he's written and pass on this stuff.