Customer Reviews

Come On In!

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John Martin "discovered" Bukowski. Although Bukowski had published before--including some beautiful small editions by Jon and Louise Webb of LouJon Press--it was publisher John Martin who propelled Bukowski into wide readership. And it was the strength of Bukowski's writing which gave Black Sparrow, Martin's small publishing house, its wings.

Martin liberated Bukowski from his job at the post office by offering him a $100/month stipend for life (a liveable wage at that time) so that Bukowski could write full time. The almost immediate result was Bukowski's first novel, Post Office, which was completed six weeks after he left his job.

For decades to come, Bukowski would send typed pages of poetry to Martin who would assemble them into books, the covers of which were designed by Martin's wife Barbara. A great part of the appeal of Black Sparrow editions is that they were about nothing but themselves--there were no blurbs, no extraneous hyping text, and even the barcodes were stickers which could be peeled off, leaving the uniformly sized covers immaculate.

Although Bukowski died in 1994, he left an immense backlog of poetry with Martin for posthumous publication. In that sense, their relationship stays the same. Sadly, Martin sold Black Sparrow in 2002.

He is still editing the collections of "new" Bukowski poetry, but the books themselves, now published by Harper Collins (under their Ecco Press imprint), lack the grace and stylistic unity of the Black Sparrow editions. The new editions are released as tacky hardbacks (to maximize profits) with textbook binding, complete with barcode printed right on the cover. Too bad.

But that's a minor concern. What matters most are the words, which come to us fresh even 12 years after Bukowski's death. The usual themes are here: guarding privacy, celebrating animals, lambasting poet wannabes, and awaiting death with dignity. Plus a few narrative poems which read like distilled short stories.

If you like Buk, you'll like this book. Always a good read.

I've become a real fan of Bukowski's work over the past four years, and read everything I can get my hands on. So far my favorite of all has been "Betting On The Muse", but this one is a very close second. Sure he's vulgar and rough, and it's poetry with images and language not for the weakhearted. But he still manages to deliver these lines within his world that just stun you. A definite must-read if you're a fan.

In the latest from the archive of his poetry comes a luminous(he would have hated the word but understood its truth) book, written near the end of his life. The old themes are there: finding out that tragedy is getting what you want, as he observes in "the waitress at the yogurt shop", the boys drooling around her, fixated on her body and oblivious to the harsh and hissing voice and pities the future husband listening to its "horrible reality." Yet there is more of the domestic, an old mans' happiness on learning to type poems---more and more---on a computer,"going,going,gone") and a bravdo, both real,"the last good night/is not yet here" from "taking the 8 count", and false ,as in "hello there", "when death comes with its last cold kiss/ i'll be ready;just another whore come to shake me down." And the final poem,"mind and heart" a graceful good bye to life.It is Bukowski at his best---knowing that for every hard truth there is a saving grace.

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. ***

"Welcome to my wormy hell," Charles Bukowski (1920 --1994) invites the reader at the outset of this collection of posthumously published poetry. Bukowski, a writer who became famous for his novels, stories, and poems depicting the raw, down-and-out life left a great deal of unpublished work at his death, and it has continued to appear in several volumes.

"Come on In!" is a mixed collection which includes some good poems. Bukowski explores themes that will be familiar to readers: life at the track, boxing, drinking,his experiences with women, loneliness and the desire to be alone, life on the edge, the love of animals, particularly cats, and the writing of poetry. The collection shows Bukowski's sardonic, wry and laconic humor.

The theme of death pervades this collection as Bukowski, old and ill, shows a full awareness of his own mortality. In addition, Bukowski reflects upon his own success as a writer. In his young days, the subject of most of Bukowski's writing, he lived the life of a drunk in the underclass. Beginning in 1971 when he received a stipend from John Martin of Black Sparrow press to devote himself to writing, Bukowski gradually became commercially successful and wealthy. In the poem "you can't tell a turkey by its feathers", which recounts how Bukowski's father thought he wouldn't amount to anything, Bukowski boasts that "Last year I paid/ $59,000 income/tax." Many of the poems involve Bukowski's sucess and recognition, as he compares his late life with his earlier days.

The poems are unrhymed and unmetered and generally written in short stanzas. Most of them are short, but in some instances Bukowski tells stories in his poems, frequently set out as dialogues or conversations. In this book, the poems are arranged in four broad divisions: "I live near the/slaughterhouse/and am ill/ with thriving"; "she looked at me and asked/did you?/did you/did you?"; "it's a lonely world/of frightened people"; "I will never have' a house in the valley/ with little stone men/ on the lawn".

The poems I enjoyed in the collection include Bukowski's reflections on his past relationship with women. In "red hot mail" Bukowski contrasts his state as a successful poet with his younger years when women would not look at him. He writes:

"I only wish now some lass had
chanced upon me then
when I so needed her hair blowing in my
face
and her eyes smiling into mine,
when I so needed
that wild music
and that wild female willingness
to be
undone."

Among the many other poems which show Bukowski in a meditative, thoughtful mood are "alone again", "to the ladies no longer here" and "here we go again." Bukowski's poem "a close call" shows all too clearly the fine line that separated sanity and madness in his life. The poem "the nude dancer" consists of an elderly Bukowski's portrayal of an exotic dancer which complements nicely an earlier poem on this theme describing an encounter in Bukowski's youth, "Love poem to a stripper". One of the acclaimed poems in this collection is "the 'Beats'" in which Bukowski contrasts his own writing to that of the beat writers and concludes:

"my opinion remains the
same: writing is done
one person
at a time
one place
at a time

and all the gatherings
of
the
flock
have very little
to do
with
anything."

But I think the best writing in "Come on In!" is in the final section of the book. Bukowski offers meditiations on his own terminal illness and on the meaning of his life which are moving indeed. The poems I enjoyed in this part include "my cats", "two nights before my 72nd birthday", and "closing time" in which Bukowski discusses his love for Beethoven, "this composer/now dead for over 100/years,/ who's younger and wilder/than you are/than I am." Bukowski observes that "the centuries are sprinkled/with rare magic/with divine creatures/who help us get past the common/ and/extraordinary ills/ that beset us."

The final poem in the book "mind and heart" is a valedictory poem as Bukowski faces death. "Unaccountably we are alone/forever alone/ and it was meant to be/that way", he begins. He reflects upon his life and finds that he has developed some had-won serenity of "peace of mind and heart." He advises his readers to "read/what I've written/then/forget it/all." And again:

"drink from the well
of your self
and begin
again."

Robin Friedman

I read a few short stories when I was a younger woman and never considered picking up Bukowski again. Twenty years later, and
I hear about the movie coming out, and then I see on the new release shelf of the library this new collection, and then later that night I find myself watching a documentary on Showtime about Bukowski that just totally enraptures me.
With his voice in my head, the next day I head back to the library hoping to still find the book on it's display, and since I am in a suburb of Dallas called Plano, I'm not too shocked to see it awaiting my itchy fingers.

NEVER have I read a book of poems from beginning to end, but I did just that over the next few days.
I can't believe I cheated myself out of Bukowski all these years.
I am a writer, but one of no formal education and I imagine I might have unearthed him earlier had I been ambitious enough to go to college. In any case, I'm basically a Billy Collins poetry lover, and I like my own work and that is generally THAT.
Bukowski is now top of my list for books to buy should I ever actually see a royalty check!

This book of Bukowski's work was released by his wife after he died. Some good stuff in here. its hard to tell if they werent released because he didnt theink them good enough while he was alive or these works were simply ready not for prime-time yet while he was living.

its all pure Buk, if you read Buk you'll want to read this.

gaxfax