Open All Night: New Poems

Rating:
Summary: Truly poetic
Review: Bukowski was the master of the personal detail. In these poems, released after his death, he examines his life with a drunken smile. He digs out the most significant moments of his life at the race track, among old friends, writing at night, listening to classical music, thinking about old girlfriends, and his childhood. He has a knack for mentioning the moments that matter, and leaving out the details that distract you from the point he's making. Every poem is good. This is one of his best books.

The poems are arranged in four sections. As you read, you realize that there's an underlying theme for each section. The first section, for example, is about burying the past. Each poem adds a thin layer to the theme until you feel it. It's quite an experience because it's so unpretentious --- he seems to be telling stories without any connection, but eventually you get the deeper story on your own.

I highly recommend this book. If you haven't read Bukowski's poetry before, this is a good place to start. Long-time fans will find this one a little flat, simply because it doesn't do anything new. They've heard all of these tales before. (But repetition was one of Bukowski's most endearing traits. He used it instead of a formal writing style.) So try Open All Night. You'll be pleased.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best work.
Review: Charles Bukowski, Open All Night: New Poems (Black Sparrow, 2000)

I note the "new poems" in the title (I don't normally with Buk books) because it's not entirely true. There's at least one poem in here which was published at least fifteen years ago. I know this because I used a piece of it as an epigram to something I wrote in 1992. (It's one of Buk's series of "yes" poems, which started in War All the Time in the early eighties; I can't remember offhand the title of the one reprinted here, though.) But then, I guess one poem in three hundred fifty pages isn't that bad. After all, with the number of three-hundred-plus-page poetic epics that have come out since Buk's death, it's obvious Linda had a whole lot of stuff to go through.

Open All Night is not Buk's strongest work (but then, you have to figure much of the posthumous stuff, written over the fifteen or twenty years before his death, was unpublished for a reason), but every once in a while a piece shines. There are a few poems in here that sounds as if they were written in the late fifties, Buk's strongest period (viz. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame), and a whole lot that sound as if they weren't. There are a number of unexpected surprises; I strongly suggest reading The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship just before reading this to catch some of the parallels towards the end. This book has the tales in poetic form, Captain has the tales in prose, and the reader can decide which voice works better for him. In my case, the prose took the cake every time, because much of Buk's poetry, towards the end, felt somewhat flabby, at times incoherent.

But, as I said, there are gems, as there are in every book of Bukowski's, and a few of the gems here shine brighter than much of the posthumously-released work. They alone are worth the price of admission. ***

Rating:
Summary: My Tom Waits of poetry/prose...
Review: I find it funny (truthfully, somewhat sad) when others give this piece anything less than five stars and dismiss it is as "not his best" work. On his worst day Buk could have typed one sentence better than a lifetime of the sewage spewed by such people. This collection is definitely a testament to that fact, as others below have astutely recognized.

If you've gotten ANY appreciation for Buk, do not hesitate to add this to your collection. It has some of the finest moments of Buk that I have ever come across, and that is definitely saying alot as I have read most of his work. There are moments contained within the corners of these pages, that are nothing less than inspiring. I certainly will be the first to admit that I cannot find words to desribe it, so I won't even try. Just rest assured that it is well worth your money to get this collection and do not believe the ramblings of others that this is somehow inferior Buk. Buk could simply do no wrong when it came to his craft.

Get this and cherish it.

Rating:
Summary: Dear publisher- a small effort please!
Review: Since this is a posthumous volume of poems I would expect some explanations or introduction from the publisher or someone else, like was this book prepared by Bukowski at the time of his death, if not why were these poems put in and not the others, when were the poems written or published, it's not enough to say between 1970 and 1990... etc...

As for the poems, Bukowski is always great, but I wouldnt recommend this book to Buk's beginner's, they should start by "War All the time" or "The days run away ...", "Septuagenarian stew" and some others before buying this one. It's more for completists, and I guess there are a few of us out there in the wilderness.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe I'm just new to Buk, but its just ok
Review: This book had some intersting stuff and it was better in the beginning than in the end. This is the first thing i've ever read by him and i know some people who are really into his poetry, so that's why I picked up one of them from the library. Most of it .... Every once in a while a good poem comes up but most of it is choppy and reptitive and boring. I should have started with a different one.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe I'm just new to Buk, but its just ok
Review: This book had some intersting stuff and it was better in the beginning than in the end. This is the first thing i've ever read by him and i know some people who are really into his poetry, so that's why I picked up one of them from the library. Most of it .... Every once in a while a good poem comes up but most of it is choppy and reptitive and boring. I should have started with a different one.

Rating:
Summary: not one word wasted
Review: While perhaps not the best book of poetry Buk ever wrote, its still dam good. In these poems you get into Buk's head while he silently observes the horror of a waitress with dead, "card-board" eyes, lifeless hunks of rotting meat swarming the streets like lethargic fly's (People, I believe their called), and the general existential screams and moans from a working class guy thats been mangeled by the system so many times he just has to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Their's plenty of down-and-out self-paradying humour, it's really great to read Buk drowning in all the misery of life and turning subjects like his own suicide attempts into comical, spare portraits of modern Man and the world we live in. Many a day I've come home from a long day of work, disgusted with living, ready to kill myself ; then I open a bottle of Red, relax, and read from a guy whose been to the edge, and instead of jumping off or comeing back he found a way to stay their and enjoy that small bit of soul the world had not yet murdered.