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List Price: $13.99 | | Publisher: Ecco
Salesrank: 713959
Released: January 3, 2006 |
| Our Price: $6.95 |
| Used Price: $2.91 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
in this place
there are the dead, the deadly and the dying.
there is the cross, the builders of the cross and the burners of the
cross.
the pattern of my life forms like a cheap shadow
on the wall before me.
my love
what is left of it
now must crawl
to wherever it can crawl.
the strongest know that death is
final
and the happiest are those gifted with the
shortest journey.
Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems Reviews:
Can't Beat the Buk 
2008-06-28 - For a guy who's been dead since 1994, Charles Bukowski is an amazingly prolific sort. This is the 13th posthumous work to come from the Buk since his death and it's subtitled "new poems."
The Buk never claimed to be the best person, the best lover, the best writer, the best anything; although I'm sure that at different times and with plenty of beer in him he put forward some extravagant claims of other kinds. I love him, and many, many regular people who feel similarly do so because, I think, he was honest, unsentimental and a great lover of humanity in his poems--even when he is castigating humanity for its ugliness. It's precisely this breadth, which I would call Whitmanesque in its strange multiplicity, that continues to amaze.
These are far from his best poems, but there are some gems in here. Bukowski was the kind of poet of which there were and are few to none--a populist who wanted to be left alone, a lonely man who wasn't alone, a craftsman of the finest stamp, somebody who, like Hemingway, got the true words down on paper and knew how to leave it there. There are poems here about the usual Buk concerns: Women, drinking, the track, love, impending death, other writers, fame, bars, working horrible jobs, starving, starving, drinking and writing in boardinghouses; his close and unforgiving (yet deeply sympathetic) portraits of other people trying to push the dharma wheel a few inches forward, usually failing.
I won't attempt to do any lit crit pronouncements on this book. It's something to read alone and laugh with, to read openly with other people, to cherish, to keep the fire alive. There's an existential commitment to meaning here, the meaning one places on one's own actions, decisions, follies, joys, tears, life and death. We were fortunate to have him and now fortunate to have all these volumes to keep us warm.
Lies, Half-lies and God-#$$% Mother-$@$@&!! LIES!!! 
2005-12-19 - I hate writing reviews. I also hate the consumer as much as the producers of goods for the most part but right now I'm feeling sprendthrift towards humanity due to all the Yuletide cheer. This book is rubbish. Nearly all of the posthumous books released by Black Sparrow/Ecco of Buk's work are fifth-rate, fragments of his glory days of skid-row bum-dom. It's as if they scraped his cancerous boils and produced enough DNA to put his soul back to life in a maggot's body with a Frankenstein's aptitude for producing works of art. The result is echoes of echoes of a former greatness. The rawness of the famed writer is lost in complete drunkenness and scraps of poems that were never published in books because they were leftover material. Maybe that's why John Martin sold off the rights because he couldn't continue to publish a dead man's best of works for obscene sums of money. If they retitled it WORST OF THE WORST: AFTERMATHS OF GLORY Vol. 5 I might feel better about the whole thing. But as is this is vainglorious puke.
Slouching Toward Greatness 
2005-10-04 - This latest volume of Charles Bukowski's poetry was published posthumously and edited by John Martin. Almost all the poems are highly personal and often told through the voice of a first person narrator who is obviously Bukowski himself. He is nothing if not opinionated. He listens to Sibelius, Wagner and Brahms, reads Auden, Dostoevsky and Hamsun, does not care for visitors, ("sometimes I simply ask them to leave/and they do") abhors poetry readings and signings ("this is the ultimate sellout, Jack.") as well as most academic poets or academics of any kind. He doesn't care for Hemingway, ("he knew that what he was/killing was already/dead.") likes his cats, ("I think cats are better than we are") alcohol and women-- although he admits that he is not always successful in his affairs-- and detests reviewers, describing them as "a dink moralist, a failed young writer or most likely just nothing at all." (I suppose I know what he would have to say about nothing Amazon reviewers.) He thinks about death but isn't obsesssed by it. ("death doesn't always come running.") After all, he is now past 70 and has beat the odds of not living a long life ("because Death after all these years/walks around in the room with me now and speaks softly"). He doesn't want a eulogy when he departs this world. "it would be nice/if one of my x-ladies was there/wearing too much makeup. . . and a tight green dress. . ." He is crazy about horse races, spends a lot of time and money attending them, and hates most movies, particularly those that win awards. ("Academy Award?", page 86.)
Two or three character sketches of Richard Corey types are included here-- a Harry Keel person, "admired and feared" in school who years later turns up as a down-and-out salesman and Dale Thorpe ("golden boy"), envied from afar in high school but who has since disappeared-- and a moving poem about a kid who, after the bullies beat him up daily at school, must endure the wrath of his mother because his clothes are ruined ("clothes cost money").
As do all good poets, Mr. Bukowski achieves much with little-- often with biting humor: "is what's good for the goose sometimes only good for the/goose?" he asks. And he beautifully contrasts youth and old age in "beach boys."
I watch the young boys on their surfboards
slim strong bodies gliding
some of them will end up in the madhouse
some of them will gain 80 pounds
some of them will commit suicide
most of them will eventually stop coming to the
beach.
The poet, who says we are all "museums of fear," eloquently describes his feelings in "with his awful teeth," describing "this dog Sadness," who is a "persistent mongrel."
There are literally dozens of similar passages in this collection that you will return to again and again.
Buk at his best
2005-05-05 - Most poets are struggling to get anything published and can hardly afford to send out less than their best work; so I have to marvel at a poet who intentionally holds back his best for publication after his death. But that's apparently what Bukowski did. I'm curious how many more poems he marked for posthumous release, but I'm not aware if John Martin has said. At any rate, the current batch is topnotch Bukowski and essential to any collection of his work.
In the past, one of my pleasures on finding a new Bukowski volume was to note the author photo, which changed from book to book. Now I get the impression that the official photo will be that of of the more avuncular-looking, white-haired Buk wearing his old-man windbreaker and gazing benignly at the camera.
Awesome collection
2005-03-05 - I keep coming back to Buk after intervals - this collection is packed with gems - scathing attacks on humanity and its parade of fools. Lonely, introspective poems that reveal the vast emptiness of the universe and the soul. I have a few volumes of Buk's stuff and can't afford to buy them all but when I flipped through the pages of Slouching ... I had to have it. You will not be disappointed if you are a fan of poems by Trakl, Rilke, Holderlin etc... Bukowski is one of the giants.
