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The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993

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For a guy who's published as many books of poetry as Bukowski has, a large book of selected poems sounds like an excellent idea: a "greatest hits" type collection for casual fans to buy; a single place to get all his best poems. And this book could have been that, save the editing. First of all, over half of the poems selected were published after Bukowski died. They obviously were not what he considered to be his strongest works, they were leftovers. I understand that he had a lot of good leftover poems, but this book really overdoes it. The worst of these poems are the leftover leftovers, poems making their debut in this book (published in 2007). What the hell are poems like that doing in a collection that's supposed to represent his most accomplished and proven work? Secondly, there's absolutely no discernible pattern to the way these poems are arranged. No dates are given, and no attempt at chronology has been made, as if to imply that Bukowski's writing never had any kind of evolution over time. If you research the poems, you can actually spot places where this book jumps multiple decades just from one poem to the next, which makes it awkward to try to read it in order. And even if you don't care about author's intent or dates or sequence, and you just want a good book of poems, I think this book still fails. There are a lot of weak poems in this book, and I think the editor took advantage of the fact that he had complete free range of probably almost every poem Bukowski ever wrote and used it to try to redefine Bukowski as a different type of poet than he was reputed as during his life. And for what purpose, just because he could? This is the same guy who's been reading Bukowski's poems for years, he was probably sick of the old ones and more excited about the posthumous poems he discovered and published in recent years. New readers of Bukowski, tempted by the "selected poems" label, will be unfairly subjected to his personal bias. That isn't to say that there aren't good poems in this book, it just could have been a lot better.

THE PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED is a collection of Charles Bukowski's poems, 548 pages of them, many of them from earlier volumes of poetry, some of them never before published. For anyone familiar with Bukowski, there are few if any surprises here, rather a healthy sampling of this iconoclast's poetry. So very autobiographical, many of these poems are about the things Bukowski loved: the races, cats (you can learn from them), booze, poetry (he calls himself a poetry junkie), Wagner, sex (like Mahler, you do not rush it), some women. He can write a paean to a lover in "The Shower" but then say in another poem that American women, as opposed to Japanese women, "will kill you like they tear a lampshade." He is not reticent in writing about people and things he hates as well: some writers, especially Hemingway, whom he describes as "just a drunk"-- the irony is that in "a clean, well-lighted place," his description of Hemingway's use of his literary reputation to reel women in "one at a time" sounds like Bukowski himself-- critics, mindless work. (He pictures workers trapped in jobs that go nowhere as having "goldfish security.)

Nothing was immune from Bukowski's pen. Apparently he could write about any subject. There are poems here on the killing of elephants in Vietnam, a grammar school bully remembered, the ignorance of youth, a trip to the doctor, picturing himself in a nursing home, a conversation with death, an old car ("a poor man's miracle"), the abuse that both he and his mother suffered at the hands of his father (his mother had "the saddest smile I ever knew"), the homeless, the old, poor, sick and dying, throwing a radio out a window, etc., etc.

No one would say that Bukowski wrote "pretty" poems. On the other hand, we cannot deny that many of them go straight to the bone. In "eating my senior citizen's dinner at the Sizzler" (what a horrendous image) markers in modern cemeteries are "flat on the ground, it's much more pleasant for passing traffic." His world is inhabited by a sixty-five-year-old man with cancer who kills his sixty-six-year-old wife who has Alzheimer's and then kills himself and a house that is sad because it is inhabited with people who have mindless, dead-end jobs. For many of the people Bukowski writes about, "it's a lonely world/of frightened people,/just as it has always/been." On the other hand, in the poem entitled "mind and heart" (p. 523), he acknowledges that we are all alone, "forever alone" but goes on to say that "I have been alone but seldom lonely."

Reading Bukowski reminds you of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg--although he certainly is not derivative of any other writer-- but a case can be made that he is a lot closer in his mood and world view to some of the darker poems of both Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson than he probably would have acknowledged. There is a place in the parade of poets for anyone who speaks the truth: the Robert Frosts, the Emily Dickinsons, the Donald Halls, the Edwin Arlington Robinsons along with the Charles Bukowskis.

Although I own almost every book Buk has written, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, expertly edited by John Martin. Martin has selected some of Buk's most provocative and surreal work and arranged it so that it still sounds fresh and vital, even to the most devoted fan. My appreciation for Bukowski's work had dwindled somewhat after the incessant posthumous collections, but Martin gives this prolific writer what he really needed lately: a good editing. Thanks.

You have to admire Bukowski for his tenacity to prove himself as an original artist and for his enormous body of work. I'm not too sure what Buk would make of his revamped, posthumous career, but he is becoming increasingly famous and this is the 14th major publication of his creative work since his death in 1994. The large blurb on the back cover of this new UK release claims: THE BEST OF THE BEST OF BUKOWSKI. As pointed out by Zachary T. Ciulla, about half of the poems collected in this volume were not published until after Bukowski's death. It is difficult to imagine Bukowski allowing a lot of this material to be published, but I suppose it is of sufficient interest to appeal to a Bukowski fanatic or scholar.

There are some astounding poems in this collection, such as `The Genius of the Crowd', `Dinosauria, we' and `the bluebird' but there is also a lot of second or third-rate filler. You can sometimes read 100 poems in a stretch and not find one worthy of detailed future consideration. I get the impression that Bukowski's long term venerable editor John Martin slapped this one together, tossing in the mix, dozens of uncollected or newly published poems to give the volume a fresh, previously unread feel, even amongst Buk's most ardent followers. The book is certainly worth reading, but overall, a vast majority of the poems did not challenge me or extend my understanding of the Bukowski canon.

If you are a novice reader of Bukowski, rather than waste your hard earned bucks on 'Pleasures of the Damned' check out some of his finer earlier work- he actually agreed to have published during his lifetime. You can't go wrong with LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL (1977), BURNING IN WATER DROWNING IN FLAME (1978) or WAR ALL THE TIME (1984).

Charles Bukowski writes that the pleasures of the damned are "limited to brief moments/of happiness:/like the eyes in the look of a dog." The poem gives its name to this 2007 anthology of Bukowski's poetry, prepared by John Martin, Bukowski's long-time friend and editor and the founder of the Black Sparrow Press, which published most of Bukowski's works.

Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1993) was an underground, cult novelist and poet whose reputation has continued to grow since his death. Bukowski is best known for his novels including "Ham on Rye", "Women" and "Factotum" and for the several movies which have been made of his works and life (including "Barfly" featuring a young Mickey Rourke.) But Bukowski also wrote many volumes of poetry, some of which continue to be published posthumously. Martin has culled through over 2000 published poems to produce this anthology of 550 pages and 271 poems, including 20 poems which had not been published earlier.

Known as the "poet of Skid Row", Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany. At the age of three, his family moved to Los Angeles where Bukowski lived for 50 years. As a young and middle aged man, Bukowski led a tattered life which he captures in his poetry. He writes of cheap rooming houses, alcohol, poverty, horse racing, and relationships with women, many of which are of the commercial variety. His poems are in a simple free verse form generally with short lines. They are easy to read. The poetry is tough, raw, vulgar, and gritty. The earlier poems tend to be shorter, imagistic, and autobiographical. The latter poems tend to be longer and frequently are more in the nature of stories or narratives than the earlier writings. As Bukowski aged, he attained a substantial degree of popular success. The latter poems reflect this success and are frequently meditative and tamer than his earlier work. Throughout Bukowski exhibits a sharp, sardonic sense of humor.

Bukowski wrote a great deal and wrote quickly. Thus, his poetry is highly uneven. Many of his poems are pessimistic in tone, focusing on death or suicide. But they also show a certain determination to live and to take the experiences life gives. The poems also emphasize the power of art, its rarity, and the ability it has to redeem even a shabby, sordid, and difficult life.

The preparation of an anthology has certain difficulties which Martin has not always surmounted. First, this anthology, similar to Bukowski's output, is too long and includes too many weak poems. Conversely, readers familiar with Bukowski's poetry will undoubtedly find that some of their favorites are not included in this collection. Poems that I missed included "Love Poem to a Stripper", "To the Whore that took my Poems", "The Beats" and others. The collection is also weighted heavily towards the latter, posthumously published works. These poems are valuable in their meditative quality, and in showing Bukowski facing illness and death and writing until the end. But they lack some of the grit for which he is likely to be best remembered. Thus, the anthology could have been shorter, better selected, and weighted somewhat differently.

With that said, Martin has captured a great deal of Bukowski and his poetry. This book gives readers, especially those new to Bukowski, a feel for his work. It includes in one place many poems that admirers of Bukowski will want to keep and revisit. The book opens and closes with two of Bukowski's best poems. The opening poem "the mockingbird" is a short, violent parable of death and destruction. The penultimate poem in the collection "the bluebird" takes a much different tone, as the seemingly harsh Bukowski tells the reader:

"there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him.
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you."

The best poems in the collection, and in Bukowski's work on the whole, are those which treat of women and sexuality in all their passion, rewards, and dangers. Somewhat less well-known are Bukowski's tributes to musicians, artists and writers. Bukowski loved classical music, and his poems celebrate Hugo Wolf, Verdi, Bruckner, and, in a poem called "closing time", Beethoven. Bukowski writes: "I/admire the verve and gamble/of this composer/now dead for over 100/years,/who's younger and wilder/than you are/than I am."

Other poems celebrate the death of John Fante, a writer that Bukowski greatly admired, together with figures such as Li Po, Sherwood Anderson, Carson McCullers and Van Gogh. In a poem called "the burning of the dream" Bukowski looks back at his days reading in the old downtown Los Angeles Library before its destruction by fire. The poem describes Bukowski's early and extensive reading and the credo he tried to follow as a writer. He states:

"It would take decades of
living and writing
before I would be able to
put down
a sentence that was
anywhere near
what I wanted it to
be."

The poems in the collection do not appear in any particular order; although the poems in which Bukowski describes his cancer and impending death are grouped towards the end. The anthology concludes with a useful alphabetical index of the poems which allows the interested reader to trace each poem to the book in which it first appeared.

Bukowski is not a poet for everyone or for every mood. But I have continued to read and to be moved by his writing for many years. Martin has produced a good anthology of poems by an American outsider.

Robin Friedman

Let me start off by saying that this is a mostly satisfying collection of Bukowski's poetry. There are a few slow spots here and there, but I strongly disagree with the reviewer who said that he could go for a hundred pages without finding a worthwhile poem; that's gross hyperbole. Overall the quality is pretty strong, certainly stronger than the average Bukowski book (excepting The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills; Love Is a Dog From Hell; Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame; War All the Time; and What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through Fire).

Most of Bukowski's books, especially the majority of the posthumous collections, are like garage sales - you dig through a dozen dusty stacks of crap to find one or two jewels worth keeping. But this one has a pretty good hit to miss ratio, although it is worth noting that most of the duds are posthumously published (or previously uncollected) poems. That said, another reviewer mentioned that the book was missing the poems "Love Poem to a Stripper", "To the Whore that took my Poems", and "The Beats." I would add to that "The Blackbirds Are Rough Today," "Consummation of Grief," and especially "I Met a Genius." Now, if you're new to Bukowski and you think that I'm just angry because some of my personal favorites are missing, go to Google and look up "Bukowski poetry," find a random website, and look for these poems. They're always there at any site you visit. That's because they're canon. How John Martin, the editor of this book, could miss these poems is beyond me. He obviously didn't check fanzines or conduct surveys, otherwise he wouldn't have overlooked such classics.

Now, if you've never read Bukowski before, and you're looking for a good collection, this is still probably the best place to start, but just be warned that it's somewhat uneven and incomplete. If you're a music fan, here's another analogy for you: You know that greatest hits collection by your favorite band that substitutes a couple of odd demos, live versions and b-sides for a few of your favorite songs? It's kind of like that - frustrating, but it's still better than most of the group's albums. So, if you're looking for one collection to replace the 10-20 Bukowski books sitting on your shelf, you may have to keep waiting for awhile. But if you're looking for a book that has the majority of Bukowski's greatest hits with a few stray b-sides thrown in, you could do a lot worse.

A wonderful collection of Bukowski's work spanning his entire career. Great for those already familiar with his poetry and for those just discovering this master. Enjoy!

To get the negations out of the way quickly, there are only two things really wrong with this collection of poems by Charles Bukowski. The title poem "The Pleasures of the Damned" is not a very strong poem and doesn't deserve to receive the titled heading for the book -- it's also a very short and obscure poem -- and the collection contains one very bad, outrageously vile poem that ought not to have been allowed into the collection: I am referring to "the colored birds" poem on pages 263 and 264. This poem celebrates wife-beating as the absolute expression of the essence of manhood or what it is to be a real man.

While Bukowski does not directly reveal his penchant for violence toward women, it nonetheless has been documented on video. Giving this kind of braggadocio and false bravado any kind of respect is the equivalent of giving honor to President Obama's peace prize even while he continues to murder hundreds of thousands of men and women. Finding this poem midway through the collection really did give me pause, the same kind of pause Bukowski otherwise lectures about in a beautiful poem about authenticity and selfhood entitled "area of pause" on page 434.

So many of the poems contain psychologically astute portraits of people, sardonic and sometimes cynical humor, situational stories, confessional poetry, and juicy bits of wisdom woven through many of the poems in this collection. Besides catching a glimpse into Charles Bukowski's reading and literary preferences (John Fante, Upton Sincair, Hemingway, and even Schopenhauer) in many poems, the prospective poetaster will also find his very last poems in this collection, his unsentimental poems about his own death and dying.

I haven't been able thus far to read or reread "the crunch" poem without choking up at the lines "people are not good to each other. people are not good to each other. people are not good to each other."

It took me several weeks to read this collection because I wanted to savor their impression and meaning over time and give myself time to reread the ones I suspected were going to be my favorites. I think if you rush through this collection, looking only for entertainment, you deserve to be disappointed. While Bukowski does write in plain and simple English, there are pauses, silences, deliberate lacunae in his poems that are deeper than the words he used with which to write the poems and he knew them and what he was doing with them. I will now call him the American Mallarme of the street.

Charles Bukowski told stories about his life, without filters or explanations. It's raw and unpretentious. If you like this style of tale-telling, then by all means, buy his books! He also wrote poetry. I prefer his tales over his poetry, but that's me. This is one individual who told it like it was, which I find fascinating. Did you know they even made a movie about him? Starred Mickey Rourke, along with a few other lesser known folks. It's called Barfly. You should check it out.

I've never read Bukowski before I picked up this book on a whim. "The Pleasures of the Damned" is blazoned with womanizing, drinking, sex, depression, angst, gamboling, and grief. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who's looking for some light, uplifting verse. The writing is simple, realistic, sometimes braggadocious and sometimes sleazy, but it always resonates with truth. There's wisdom, insight, and some gut-wrenching humor in this collection. I'm glad that I picked it up this book, it's a keeper.

Beware: reading more than a handful of poems at a time may make you want to down a fifth of Jack and burst out of your reading chair and into the closest dive bar or horse track looking for trouble.