Customer Reviews

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've personally been slightly let down in recent years by the books which have come out of Bukowski's. (he died in 1994). I picked up this collection half expecting more of the same. Didn't Bukowski himself insist that some of his work was not-so-great? Well, this collection was a delight and a surprize! Most of these poems are from the early 1970's when Bukowski lived in East Hollywood. In these poems, (which have never been published until now) he belts out hymns to the outsiders, the lost, the cheated and the ignored. He trains his eye on the poor and the underdog. I personally thought this collection was nothing short of magnificent. Bukowski is back! No freeway, bottle and music up in a room old man poems. I liked those too but I'd had enough of them. I will lay it down straight: of ALL Bukowski's books this is my favorite and I've read them all.

While Buk has been dead for 5 years now, his estate has continued to publish from a collection of accumulated writings. This is by far the best of the posthumously published books to date, with particularly strong poems from his best years...this book may in fact be the best Buk work published in 20 years. If you are new to Bukowski, this is a good volume with which to start...if you are an old fan, you will not be disappointed with this collection.

Bukowski's latest will not let avid readers down. Better than _Bone Palace Ballet_--which was essentially just a second-drawer version of _Last Night of the Earth Poems_--_What Matters Most. . ._ is a compilation of work that spans over twenty years and includes some vintage Bukowski that has been missing from recent Black Sparrow releases. This latest collection gives me hope that we can expect more quality Bukowski work well into the next century.

Bukowski's world is not for the timid or those that wear rose-colored glasses. "Hank" shows life as it truly is, slimy undertow and all. Yet even in a sometimes compulsive bitter and negative outlook on life, Bukowski finds joy and pleasure in life's simpler things that some ay overlook. His world isn't always pleasant, but you won't regret taking the journey.

This is the best new Bukowski poetry collection since THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS, mainly because of the inclusion of older poems from his more "lyrical" period. Readers of the Wormwood Review will recognize many of the poems printed here for the first time in book form (although credit is not given to any individual magazine). Unlike the last two Bukowski collections DEATH is not the main theme here (although Buk wrote about his imminent demise as far back as the '60s), but more "slices of life" harkening back to his days in East Hollywood and beyond. Black Sparrow promises more poetry collections in the future, my God, how MUCH did this man write? I'll get those, too, why stop now? Anyone serious about Bukowski should also buy a copy of Aaron Krumhansl's DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hail, hail.

The man does not write Haiku, but when it comes to writing about life as it is without agenda and without illusion, we've got nobody better.

And I agree with the other reviewers who find this the best Bukowski they've read in a long time, and I've read all of the Black Sparrow releases.

So get the book. You will not be disappointed.

I've been aware of Charles Bukowski's status as a sort of "cult" figure in the world of literature, but had never actually read any of his books. So I picked up "What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire" in a bookstore, opened up to a random poem, and started reading. Well, I was hooked from that moment.

"What Matters" is a posthumous volume of poetry by the prolific Bukowski, who died in 1994. According to the acknowledgments on the copyright page, these poems were written between 1970 and 1990 and were part of an archive which the poet left to be published after his death.

The poems in "What Matters" are written in free verse. Bukowski's vernacular language has an energy, charm, and down-to-earth accessibilty. His main themes are as follows: gambling at the racetrack, drinking, women, death and aging, other writers and artists, poetry itself, and his own public image as a hard-drinking dirty old man. He often writes about people or animals who might be seen as pathetic or seedy.

The book is full of intriguing literary references; he mentions Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, Kafka, Rilke, Lorca, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway, Auden, Henry Miller, "gutsy Ezra Pound," and many more writers. There are many narrative poems, often featuring "Henry Chinaski," who appears to be Bukowski's alter ego.

"What Matters" is full of the cruder side of urban life: the reader will encounter pimps, gamblers, the "dreary and doped / battalions" of prostitutes, a "flowing / tide of piss" from a clogged Salt Lake City urinal, etc. There is often suffering. But through it all, Bukowski is often funny, philosophical, and even gentle. He can even find an epiphany in the act of shaving: "& I'm aware of ghosts & spirits & clouds / & blood & weeping & skeletons & / much more."

In the poem "they arrived in time," Bukowski pays tribute to some of the writers who have moved him: he calls them "those friends / deep in my blood." If you read "What Matters," you might find Bukowski getting deep into your own blood.

Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (Black Sparrow, 1999)

With the exception of The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, the posthumously published Bukowski material just doesn't live up to the stuff he published while he was still alive; cynical readers will likely say he made his reputation while alive, then left the leftovers to be published afterwards. Be that as it may, that's not to say the posthumous stuff isn't worth reading. Bukowski hit his stride as a poet in the mid-fifties, and snatches of greatness continued up through the late seventies/early eighties with regularity; much of the material here was written during the latter half of that time period, and, as expected, flashes of brilliance show through. Flashes, however, are not likely to sustain a reader coming to Bukowski for the first time over the course of four hundred nine pages of poetry; the neophyte would be well advised to turn to Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame or War All the Time for a first crack at the man who made it all look so easy. What Matters Most... is best left for after you're an established Buk fan and know how to separate the what from the chaff. This is about half and half, but remember, chaff is a whole lot lighter, and so you can pack more of it in, pound for pound. ** ½

Here is another collection of Bukowski poems posthumously released and what else can be said that hasn't been said before. If you have read any of his poetry in the past and you are a fan, here you go folks; more edgey, off beat, colorful stories told in Bukowski's unique poetry rhetoric. The title of this book sums up what I believe to be the most important aspect of Bukowski's message. Let no bar napkin be left unread, Chuck has still got it, even after death.

Its astonishing just how many people, when they hear the name Bukowski, are ready to dismiss him, in less than a breath, as some sort of sexist, macho, skid-row bard, caught up in his teufelskreis of booze, broads, and back-rent, whose poetics consisted of nothing more than a gritty roominghouse lyricism. In these days of postmodern, deconstructed, politically correct aesthetics, its easy to forget the immense contribution that Bukowski made to American poetry. Picking up where W.C. Williams and the Beats left off, Bukowski reasserted the power of the demotic and its relevance to American experience. Of course this has not been without its negative flip-side, the result being a deluge of confessional, slice-of-life, petit moi poetry, from which contemporary American poetry has yet to recover. But what sets Bukowski apart from all of his imitators is his ability to turn his bleak, existential vision into something truly universal, which is also the secret of his worldwide popularity. You dont have to be intimately familiar with dingy bars, nasty whores, run-down hotels, and the harsh Los Angeles sun to know where Bukowski is coming from. His understanding of the human dilemma, his compassion for animals, and his impatience with conformity and the dead-before-death gang transcended the claustrophobic milieu of down-and-out, blue-collar Los Angeles, and the true crux of Bukowskis art was his remarkable talent to turn his quotidian despair into something that even Japanese bank executives or Spanish art students can relate to, approximating a sort of tongue-in-cheek Kafka of American poetry.
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire is the second in Black Sparrows series of posthumous volumes of Bukowskis poetry, and is full of some of his most incendiary poetry to date. This is not just some old mothballed Bukowski that John Martin has dusted off and wheeled out to help pay the rent now that Black Sparrows star poet is gone; at 412 pages, this is a veritable tome of vintage Bukowski culled from the early 1970s up to the 1990s, from one of Americas most influential, oft-imitated, yet essentially inimitable poets ever.
Aside from the usual bar, racetrack, flophouse, and hangover poems, all blazing brilliantly with Bukowskis trademark fusion of angst and irony, there are also many poems of sheer, exacting, even frightening, beauty, executed with all the boldness and audacity of a German expressionist painter, such as the haunting full moon, here in its entirety;

red flower of love
cut at the stem
passion has its own
way
and hatred too.
the curtain blows open
and the sky is black
out there tonight.
across the way
a man and a woman
standing up against a darkened
wall,
the red moon
whirls,
a mouse runs along
the windowsill
changing colors.
I am alone in torn levis
and a white sweat shirt.
shes with her man now
in the shadow of that wall
and as he enters her
I draw upon my

cigarette.

Of course one cant help speculating as to the true strategy behind such posthumous collections. Did the author feel the poems werent strong enough to be included in other collections? Were they purposely held back by the publisher in anticipation of the authors eventual death and the ensuing dry spell? Or were they simply too personal, too gut-level and potentially libelous to risk publishing during the authors lifetime? In the case of Bukowski, it was obviously partly the latter. He takes merciless jabs, pokes, and swings at many peers and contemporaries, as in the hilarious 4 Christs, where Bukowski attends a poetry reading in Santa Cruz with Ginsbing, Beerlinghetti, G. Cider, and Jack Bitcheline. In other poems, many other writers, such as Henry Miller and Diane Wakoski, are also caught in the beam of Bukowskis critical searchlight.
For anyone who wishes to re-examine the work of this immensely popular, highly contested poet, this collection is an excellent place to begin, covering as it does a span of over twenty years. For fans wishing to fill out their collection of already published Bukowski, this is a must, a cornucopia of outtakes and bonus tracks that will further establish Bukowskis already enduring place in American literature.