Customer Reviews

The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps

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

 

 

Always loved and respected Buk as a unique character in American contemporary Lit. A hand-picked and convinced anarchist who played many games one of his favorites being to present himself as a lumprenproletarian alcos and womanizer (how about a very sensitive and sophisticated writer with fine, fine taste in Literatur & Music?)and yet all good things come to an end. Dear Linda, please stop publishing the leftovers. This book is not worthy of Buk's legacy. Only sporadically a thought a line reminds us of the grand old curmudgeon...and yet forgive me for telling you this. Perhaps the Bukowski book should never end?

Well it's raining it's pouring

Didn't bring a sweater

Nebraska never let you come back home

And on hollywood and vine

By the thrifty mart sign

Any night I'll be willin' to bet

There's a young girl

With sweet little dreams

And pretty blue wishes

Standin' there just gettin' all wet

Now there's a place off the drag

Called the Gilbert hotel

And there's a couple letters burned out the sign

And it's better then the bus stop

And they do good business

Every time it rains

For little girls

With nothing in their jeans

but pretty blue wishes

Sweet little thing

And it's raining it's pouring

Old man is snoring

Now I lay me down to sleep

I hear the sirens in the street

All my dreams are made of chrome

I have no way to get back home

I'd rather die before I wake

Like Marilyn Monroe

And throw my dreams out in

The street let the

Rain make 'em grow

Now the night clerk he got a club foot

He's heard every hard luck story

At least a hundred times or more

He says check out time is 10 am

And that's just what he means

Go up the stairs

With your sweet little wishes

Your pretty blue dreams

And it's raining it's pouring

Hollywoods just fine

Swindle a little out of her dreams

Another letter in the sign

Now never trust a scarecrow

Wearin' shades after dark

Be careful of that old bow tie he wears

It takes a sweet little bullet

From a pretty blue gun

To put those scarlet ribbons in your hair

No that ain't no cherry bomb

4th of July's all done

Just some fool playin' that second line

From the barrel of a pretty blue gun

No that ain't no cherry bomb

4th of July's all done

Just some fool playin' that second line

From the barrel of a pretty blue gun

-I find it so childish and stupid (and, to a degree, sickening) that some idiot starts to critique Buk's work by referring to what his dumba*s teachers would have done when presented with poetry. That fool is on such a slippery slope, it's hardly worth comment, but, to begin, everyone knows that those who can't do, teach. Second, of course an idiot such as that reviewer can't come up with anything better, hence he's resigned to writing verbose and over-thought criticims of Buk's work within the confines of Amazon rather than creating anything of worth or substance. My God, I still can't get over it..."if my english teacher saw the word 'brutality' they'd put a red check by name and I'd get no gold star...." Get a life.

As for the rest of you who have enough sense to see through such a review and know that it's worth no more than the bullsh*t it actually is, get this collection of Buk's work without any further thought. It's Buk, it's fantastic, and there are moments of absolute beauty and splendor. I know that makes sense to those who can think for themselves and who actually have a reasonable head on their shoulders.

Anyway, get this book. Enjoy it, cherish it and love it. I'm certain you will.

"...Unleashing the joyful primal call they could no longer hear." Hank "The Night Torn Mad..."

I have read most of his work, and never tire of it. So bring it on Linda and Black Sparrow, where ever you can find it, bring it all on and share it with the rest of us. So it ain't vintage Buk, who cares, it's Hank. Hank baring it all in the singular signature way he always did. Pass me another beer baby and bring me my Bukowski!

Yeah, I like my Rimbaud and Neruda and Sexton and Pound and Browning and Yeats et al...

But every once in a while...

Bukowski drops on my lap,

And I, lap it up

Like a parched pup

After a lengthy lope.

Lord Bryon he isn't, but I just can't get enough of this cat. If you are new to Hank, then perhaps start someplace else - Post Office, Ham on Rye, Factotum, Love is a Dog From Hell, etc... - but if you are an avid fan of his, you HAVE to add this 2001 posthumous patchwork to your book/poetry collection.

"They say that nothing is wasted: either that or it all is."

This is a great coffee table book. For you can pick it up at any time, turn to almost any page, and see the definition of vulnerability, of truth, of what it means to stand alone against this world and not back down to the mindless masses of mediocrity. So give it a stab folks, it just might be worth it... It was for me!

"...and nothing is more personal than walking down

a stairway alone

thinking about nothing. I often like to

think about nothing for hours."

Charles Bukowski, The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps (Black Sparrow, 2001)

Can a person be great and yet not too good at the same time?

I ask myself that pretty much every time I open another book of Charles Bukowski's poetry. Something in me quails, because I know in the roughly 300 pages before me (this one clocks in at just around 350), I'm going to see every rule of decent poetry writing broken. Usually multiple times on a page. "Show don't tell" goes completely out the window. Line breaks? Absolutely hideous. Avoid confessional poetry? Bukowski wallows in it. By all rights, I should be right there with the rest of the critics talking about how much the man's work sucks, how it's simply not poetry. A few examples should serve to be sufficient:

"I am such an unpopular human/being." (the first line of "It's Just Me")

"the house of horrors/the house of a thousand beatings/the house of brutality and unhappiness." ("A Drink to That")

The word "brutality" has no place in a poem. Ever. Any writing teacher I ever had, and the vast majority of critics, would look at any poems containing the word "brutality," slash a red line through it, and say "show, don't tell!"

And yet the simple fact of the matter is that Charles Bukowski has outsold every other American poet who penned a single line during the twentieth century. Ran rings around most of them; the sales of one Bukowski book probably dwarf the sales of the complete output of every Pulitzer prize winner, taken on their own. Something draws people to his books by the thousands.

Unfortunately, I doubt that it has anything to do with the truly brilliant flashes of image that shine through once every twenty pages or so, the places where the later work of Bukowski sounds like the older work of Bukowski (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, written between 1955 and 1970, is one of the finest books of poetry written in the last century). They are few, but some of them are so heart-stopping they make wading through the rest of it a joy:

"sometimes dogs/in the alley/play the violin better/then the privileged peacocks/who swim in butter./I speak now of young/dogs in/old rooms of peeling wallpaper and/the bathroom down the hall-always with/somebody in there." ("The Fish with Yellow Eyes and Green Fins Leaps into the Volcano")

I think it has more to do with the idea that a volume of Bukowski's poetry (and his novels, too) reads like a dime store self-help book. "Here, look at how bad my life is. Identify with a few things and use the rest to reflect on your own life and say, `hey, it's not that bad.'" Even the severest critic, when alone, probably finds a few of those image-less strophes to identify with and smile at. "the dark is empty;/most of our heroes have been/wrong." ("I Can't See Anything") No, it isn't poetry. But it's something. And it's something in the works of a self-confessed prudish misanthrope that reaches out to others.

I don't pretend to know what it is (Bukowski does, though-"'it's easy,' I said, `all I do is/lie as truthfully as possible.'" -"Good Pay"). And I force myself to admit that while they're getting what they're getting out of it, at least they're getting snatches of greatness in amongst the rubble. ***

In these poems (from the 1970s and 1980s), Bukowski is getting away from the references to animals of the earlier years, moving into more specific events. Everything that happens is both small and universal. Nothing's too pretty. Kind of like real life!

He's not sentimental, he's sad, and he laughs at himself. One of his best collections.

Charles Bukowski's poems are grounded in California observations and scenes: and The Night Torn With Mad Footsteps provides new poems from the prolific poet's pen, which range from coastal experiences to reflections on the relative silence of typing on a modern typewriter as compared to noisy manuals of the past. Anticipate some hard language and smooth insights.

I haven't even read Bukowski's latest collection, THE NIGHT TORN MAD, but I was so happy to finally get the book from amazon, that I had to share my excitement (and give it an anticipated rating of four stars). I guess I shouldn't say I haven't read it yet, as I've gotten to page 27 already, and I have to say, this is classic Buk. John Martin and Bukowski, were wise to set aside poems, some of them dating back to the early '70s, so that we fans could gobble up each new posthumous collection. Speaking of which, this is the ELEVENTH Buk book to come out since he died (the 5th poetry collection, counting BETTING ON THE MUSE), which I find amazing. I can see why the rumor mongers think Martin has a ghost writer churning out these new collections. Anyway, having read only 27 pages I've already come across a Bukowski classic, a poem entitled, "Beagle," which contains the line the book title was taken from. I can't wait to see what the rest of the book holds for me. Hail hail the Buk!

Black Sparrow Press puts together an amazing book. And this is some of Bukowskis finest work ever. The hardcover deluxe edition is well woth the fifteen extra bucks.

Difficult to belive--so much bad Bukowski. And all in one place.

I got the "new" bukowksi book today....I read from the back...

bukowski....work work work...his dad really did win...this guy who claimed to hate work and just be a bum...he could work....write write write....he wrote poems and novels....type type type.....and in the end he made some cash....

bukowski's type type type work work work ethic made this book possible....

don't try to create.
Do it
or Don't

I am Bauer