Poetry Books
The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993
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Manufacturer: Ecco
Author: Charles Bukowski
Publisher: Ecco
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Our Price: $19.77
You Save: $ 10.18 ( 34% )
Usually ships in 1 to 2 weeks
Manufacturer: Ecco
Author: Charles Bukowski
Publisher: Ecco
Average Customer Rating:
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The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 Description
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780061228438
ISBN: 0061228435
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 576
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Publisher: Ecco
Product Release Date: 2007-10-30
Studio: Ecco
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780061228438
ISBN: 0061228435
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 576
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Publisher: Ecco
Product Release Date: 2007-10-30
Studio: Ecco
Editorial Review of The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993
To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has struck a chord with generations of readers.
Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's “immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human condition” (New York Quarterly). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.
Customer Reviews of The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bukowski Collection
Review: I've long been a fan of Bukowski and it's nice to have such a large collection at my fingertips. It's nice to read some of the old poems, one more time. He was a classic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: there are really people like this
Review: I used to work for a newspaper here in chicago that exclusively devoted itself to bars, every bar, in the city of chicago. Most of these establishments were pretty decent but there were a few that probably should have gone out of business some time ago but still somehow subsisted on older patrons who went and drank there. These were older drinkers who would sit at the bar alone or hollar accross at someone else sitting at the other end. My first reaction was, first of all I cant believe theres people like this, and secondly, after reading The pleasures of the damned, I visualized this mans character in one of these bars.
Bokowski's writing style teeters between poetry and plain old conversation that make him enjoyable to read. dont be fooled by the scruff, hes a more articulate character than your average dead beat drunk. I was happy to have come accross his work a little older as I am now fully able to understand much of his work as I would not have before. Ranging from the pornographic to the delicate still life of other people in their life, his style of writing reads as if someone is actually verbalizing the words, telling you a story, in slang, in short conversational style, that make his bite size confucious style poems worth a read.
I was exposed to Charles Bukowski from a DVD documentary about the author, and came to his books later, which is how i suggest others become acquainted with his work.
A true american diamond, Bukowski is one of the rarest of success stories, which make his work more rewarding to read. A true plain spoken style of the fringe.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great for those new to Bukowski
Review: this book is great for what it is intended for. A look at Bukowski in a sort of encyclopedic form. Bukowski is very real and heartfelt but in the most simplest blunt fashion and I mean that to be very appreciative.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "I Have Been Alone But Seldom Lonely"
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bukowski Rocks!
Review: 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!
Review Summary: Bukowski Collection
Review: I've long been a fan of Bukowski and it's nice to have such a large collection at my fingertips. It's nice to read some of the old poems, one more time. He was a classic.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: there are really people like this
Review: I used to work for a newspaper here in chicago that exclusively devoted itself to bars, every bar, in the city of chicago. Most of these establishments were pretty decent but there were a few that probably should have gone out of business some time ago but still somehow subsisted on older patrons who went and drank there. These were older drinkers who would sit at the bar alone or hollar accross at someone else sitting at the other end. My first reaction was, first of all I cant believe theres people like this, and secondly, after reading The pleasures of the damned, I visualized this mans character in one of these bars.
Bokowski's writing style teeters between poetry and plain old conversation that make him enjoyable to read. dont be fooled by the scruff, hes a more articulate character than your average dead beat drunk. I was happy to have come accross his work a little older as I am now fully able to understand much of his work as I would not have before. Ranging from the pornographic to the delicate still life of other people in their life, his style of writing reads as if someone is actually verbalizing the words, telling you a story, in slang, in short conversational style, that make his bite size confucious style poems worth a read.
I was exposed to Charles Bukowski from a DVD documentary about the author, and came to his books later, which is how i suggest others become acquainted with his work.
A true american diamond, Bukowski is one of the rarest of success stories, which make his work more rewarding to read. A true plain spoken style of the fringe.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great for those new to Bukowski
Review: this book is great for what it is intended for. A look at Bukowski in a sort of encyclopedic form. Bukowski is very real and heartfelt but in the most simplest blunt fashion and I mean that to be very appreciative.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "I Have Been Alone But Seldom Lonely"
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bukowski Rocks!
Review: 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!