The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 (Hardcover)

by Charles Bukowski (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
These poems, gathered from the prolific poet's early, out-of-print, and now scarce pamphlets, come on the heels of his screenplay success, Barfly . In the poet's opinion, "The early poems are more lyrical," but readers may find it hard to spot much diversity in Bukowski's 40 years' output; his work, whether poetry, fiction, or drama, has remained thematically stagnant. The language is a bit less ostentatious than in later work, permitting a gentle and often self-mocking humor to emerge: "if I am a fly I'll never know/ what a lion really is." Other poems reveal an innate sensitivity to people, especially women, which Bukowski has apparently attempted to mask in more recent work. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
. . . American Express, Athens, Greece
10 Lions And The End Of The World
2 Outside, As Bones Break In My Kitchen
22,000 Dollars In 3 Months
35 Seconds
3:30 A.m. Conversation
4:30 A.m
6 A.m
86'd
9 Rings
About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter
All I Know
Anthony
The Ants
As I Lay Dying
The Beast
The Best Way To Get Famous Is To Run Away
Big Bastard With A Sword
The Blackbirds Are Rough Today
Brave Bull
Breakout
Bring Down The Beams
Buffalo Bill
Conversation In A Cheap Room
A Conversation On Morality, Eternity And Copulation
Counsel
Countryside
Cows In Art Class
The Day I Kicked Away A Bankroll
Dear Friend
Death Wants More Death
Destroying Beauty
The Dogs
The Dogs Of Egypt
Dow Jones: Down
Eat
Eaten By Butterflies
An Empire Of Coins
The End
Everything
Experience
Face While Shaving
A Farewell Thing While Breathing
Farewell, Foolish Objects
Fleg
Fragile
Freedom: The Unmolested Eagle Of Myself
Friendly Advice To A Lot Of Young Men
The Genius Of The Crowd
The Gift
Goldfish
The Gypsies Near Del Mar
Hangover And Sick Leave
Hello, Willie Shoemaker
The High-rise Of The New World
Horse On Fire
I Am Visited By An Editor And A Poet
I Am With The Roots Of Flowers
I Cannot Stand Tears
I Don't Need A Bedsheet With Slits For Eyes To Kill You In
I Have Lived In England
I Kneel
I Wait In The White Rain
I Was Born To Hustle Roses Down The Avenues Of The Dead
I Write This Upon The Last Drink's Hammer
Imbecile Night
Insomnia
Interviewed By A Guggenheim Recipient
It's Not Who Lived Here
It's Nothing To Laugh About
Itch, Come And Gone
The Japanese Wife
A Kind Of Lecture On A Dull Day When There Isn't Even A Fly .. To Kill
The Kings Are Gone
Layover
Letter From The North
The Literary Life
The Look
The Loser
Love Is A Piece Of Paper Torn To Bits
The Man With The Hot Nose
Mercy, Wherever You Are, Come Running In To Me & Grab Me In Your Arms
The Mexican Girls
The Millionaire
A Minor Impulse To Complain
Monday Beach, Cold Day
Mother And Son
The New Place
A Nice Place
The Night They Took Whitey
Not Quite So Soon
Notations From A Muddled Indolence
Nothing Subtle
O, We Are The Outcasts
Object Lesson
Old Man Dead In A Room
On A Night You Don't Sleep
On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show
On Seeing An Old Civil War Painting With My Love
On The Failure Of A Poet
One Hundred And Ninety-nine Pounds Of Clay Leaning Forward
One Night Stand
Pansies
Parts Of An Opera, Parts Of A Guitar, Part Of Nowhere
Poem For Liz
Poem For My 43rd Birthday
Poem To A Most Affectionate Lady
Practice
A Rat Rises
Regard Me
A Report Upon The Consumption Of Myself
Reprieve And Admixture
Reunion
Rose, Rose
Sad-eyed Mules Of Men
Saying Goodbye To Love
Seahorse
The Simplicity Of Everything In Viet Nam
Singing Is Fire
Sleep
Soiree
Somebody Always Breaking My Dainty Solitude
Spain Sits Like A Hidden Flower In My Coffeepot
Suicide
The Sun Wields Mercy
Sundays Kill More Men Than Bombs
The Swans Walk My Brain In April It Rains
Thank God For Alleys
Thermometer
This
A Trick To Dull Our Bleeding
Very
What To Do With Contributor's Copies
When The Berry Bush Dies I'll Swim Down Green River .. Hair On Fire
Winter Comes To A Lot Of Places In August
With Vengeance Like A Tiger Crawls
A Word On The Quick And Modern Poem-makers
Wrong Number
You Smoke A Cigarette
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Books (May 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876857330
• ISBN-13: 978-0876857335
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,191,238 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars worth reading if you're a fan, September 5, 2005

By	A. S. Lyons "toecutter" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Paperback)

If you're a Buk fan you'll want to check out his earlier 'more lyrical' poetry; basically not as raw and hard-hitting as his work in the Seventies and beyond, a bit more fancy word-work involved, but still interesting. If you're not a fan, and prefer all that pretentious abstract imagist poetry, then this is probably the only book by the man that you might like...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You feel like you are really holding something, December 30, 2004

By	Maureen McGuire "Mari" (Pocatello, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Paperback)

I thought that this collection was one of Bukowski's best. I have a number of books from this publisher and think they are classy, functional, and even though paperback feel like you are really holding something.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bukowski's Early Uncollected Poems, September 11, 2006

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Paperback)

Charles Bukowski (1920 -- 1994) is best known as the writer of novels such as "Ham On Rye" and "Women", which are based upon the author's life and feature a character named Henry Chinaski, and for movies such as "Barfly" and "Factotum" based upon Bukowski's novels and stories. But Bukowski saw himself primarily as a poet. He wrote prolifically for years, publishing frequently in journals and little magazines. His extensive writing belies, somewhat, Bukowski's public image. It shows a person interested in considerably more that alcohol, horseracing, and sex. Bukowski devoted a great deal of time and energy to becoming a writer.

The collection "Roominghouse Madrigals" was published by Black Sparrow Press in 1988, following the success of the movie "Barfly." Black Sparrow had already published several collections of Bukowski's poetry, but "Roominghous Madrigals" is a collection of earlier material, writen between 1946 and 1966. In fact, the collection dates overwhelmingly from the latter ten years, as Bukowski virtually had stopped writing during the mid 1940s to mid 1950s. In the forward to the collection, Bukowski writes that he and some editorial assistants attempted to gather together some of the poems from Bukowski's earliest efforts for publication in the book. He describes the poems as "more lyrical" than his subsequent efforts and that he retains a "certain fondness" for them because of the life of cheap roominghouses, menial jobs, lack of money, and effort at writing that they recalled to the him.

As with much of Bukowski's poetry, the poems of "Roominghouse Madrigals" are short, broken-lined, unrhymed and unmetered. They generally speak directly to the author's immediate experiences. Whitman is a source for Bukowski's poetry (Emily Dickinson may be as well, given the personal character of the poems) as is the 20th Century poet Robinson Jeffers. The book is long for a collection of poetry (256 pages) and the poems are put together without apparent sequence and with no attempt to correlate the poem with the year in which it was writtin or to its initial publication, if any.

I found "Roominghouse Madrigals" a mixed collection with some poems working, others not. The book is dark and pessimistic, as a whole, with many poems exploring themes of death and suicide, violence and hard living, loneliness, and a broad sense of alienation. The book differs from some of Bukowski's later work in its use of elaborate metaphor, which is frequently highly striking, vivid, and surrealistic. In addition, this collection frequently explores themes at a more abstract level than does most of Bukowski's later poetry. As with most of Bukowski's work, there is a sense of redemption in this book, as the poet tries to create a meaningful life in the crassness or his surroundings through the practice of capturing his experiences in art.

Some of the poems in the collection that I found effective include "It's not who Lived Here", "Poem for my 43d Birthday", "The Japanese Wife", "The Loser", "All I know", "Old Man Dead in a Room", "Counsel", "Goldfish", "Sad-Eyed Mules of Men" "The Gypsies near Del Mar", and "Rose, Rose". Overall, this collection of early, scattered works does not represent the best of Bukowski's poetry.

Readers might want to check the pagination carefully before purchasing "The Roominghouse Madrigals." In my copy, pages 133 -- 164 are included twice while pages 165--196 are missing.

Robin Friedman