| Title | : | Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 157423028X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781574230284 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 1997 |
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems Reviews
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I like Bukowski. I like his blunt honesty. I like how he manages to give a damn and not give a damn at the same time. I like how easy it is, how natural it feels. It's very human poetry. It isn't posed or faked, it isn't trying to drown itself in pity, misery or self-loathing. There's a feeling of tender detachment in it. Like he's looking back on it.
And he might well have been. I didn't know this was a selection of previously unpublished works until I was almost done reading it. "New Poems" might have given it away, but all poems are new at some point, so really, how would I know? Had I known I might not have bought it.
The thing about selections like this is that, well... some things were just never meant to be published.
The majority of the poems in this book are pretty good - but not great. Bukowski is very apt at making me see the world from a different perspective - one that is otherwise lost to me, and I love that. I love the style he has and the easy simplicity he employs.
However, we do hit some less fortunate selections. To be quite frank I have no idea what the fuck some of it's doing there. There's a poem about his cat. Several about exchanging his typewriter with a computer. Some are about being old They're repetitive, some descriptions or variations thereof are used more than once. To be honest he's a little off through the whole thing, but some are worse than others. There are still moments when he shines and I'm amazed. But not as much as I'd like.
Maybe I'm just expecting the wrong thing:
"I am writing a novel now and one way
or the other I have lost 4 chapters in this
computer.
now like everything else
this isn't such an important thing
unless it happens to you
(...)
like you'll read this poem and
think, too bad, well, he lost 4
chapters
but couldn't he have written a
poem about
reaming some whore in a
motel room
instead?"
but couldn't you have done that, Charles? And saved me having to sit through this drivel that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling like you've given up?
No, in the end I can't blame him. He didn't publish it. The whole selection suffers under not having been meant to be published together.
The title is exceptional though, that alone deserves 5 stars, I wish the rest had too. -
This collection is surprisingly consistent and wonderful. Poems that were left to be published after his death. The stark beauty of simplicity on display. Bukowski breaks down this complicated thing we call Life. My stand out fave is ‘ The Smirking Dark’. It had an ‘It Follows’ vibe.
The following poem reminded me of Kanye’s confessional song ‘Runaway’. Let’s have a hand for the douchebags... though in the poem, it’s the complainers. Lol idk I also think it’s worth noting the double play of the line ‘and it’s just another day/ wasted’. Indeed.
Killing Life
minor and trivial complaints,
constantly aired,
might drive a saint mad,
let alone a common good
old boy ( me ).
and worse, those who
complain
are hardly aware they do it
unless finally told
and even finally told
they don’t believe it.
and so nothing leads
anywhere
and it’s just another day
wasted,
kicked in the ass,
mutilated
while the Buddha
sits in the corner
smiling. -
Some of these were excellent, some of these weren't.
But hey, that's Bukowski.
First Love:
"--without those books
I'm not quite sure
how I would have turned
out:
raving; the
murderer of the father;
idiocy;
hopelessness.
when my father shouted
"LIGHTS OUT!"
I'm sure he feared
the well-written word
immortalized
forever
in our best and
most interesting
literature.
and it was there
for me
close to me
under the covers
more woman than woman
more man than man.
I had it all
and
I took it." -
This is one of those posthumous collections of unpublished Bukowski poems, of which there are many. You get the impression he was knocking them out quickly, an old man writing for himself, to himself, repeating himself, lazy, funny..but the spirit is still strong and occasionally a poem or a line will astound.
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It is always a comfort to me to read Bukowski’s poetry.
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"upon reading a critical review"
it's difficult to accept
and you look around the room
for the person they are talking
about.
he's not there
he's not here.
he's gone.
by the time they get to your books you
are no longer in your
books.
you are on the next page,
in your next
book.
and worse,
they don't even get the old books right.
you are given credit you don't
deserve, for insights that aren't
there.
people read themselves into books, altering
what they need and discarding what they
don't.
good critics are as rare as good
writers.
and whether I get a good review or a
bad one
I can take neither
seriously.
I am on the next page.
in the next book. -
the five star reviews acting like this man was shakespeare reincarnated when 98% of this collection was shit like “you are the yummy yummy man of my dreams” and “your mother’s got a great ass” 😭😭😭 unserious behavior
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Another volume of madness, art, emotion. Through his later years Bukowski becomes wiser yet the profoundness of his voice remains intact. Seemingly flirting with death, he still churns the lines as powerful as ever, covering a wide spectrum of themes between life and death. Poetry that will make your toes curl.
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He was allowed to explore his signature turns of phrase, too, all. I know most of us depend on Hank/Chuck the pithy eloquent filthmonger of lust, self damage, isolation & drunken hatred. So I really dug his final foray into a more fluid languid style.
We all had to draw our own interpretations in Bone Palace; Bukowski ditched a lot the dirty sad honesty he offered us most of the time so I rated Bone Palace five stars. At his caliber he'd earned it. Yeah as a newbie go w Post Office, but don't write this off as "not Bukowski enough," please. -
Bukowski always grabs my total attention. Whether I'm completely outraged by his cantankerous, lustful and provocative pieces or am lifted by his insightful and sensitive poems dealing with classical music, cats and horse racing, I am always fully engaged, entertained and challenged. This collection of some of his latest poems also includes many wonderful pieces where looks into the face of death with defiance. He will always be one of my favorite poets.
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Witty, real, and addictive to read, poem after poem. This collection is great for reading while alone and late at night. You'll feel his company.
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A really great variety in this collection. Very few stinkers in the batch.
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This being an assortment of buk's variously uncollected poetry - important to note: rather than vs. 'unpublished', b/c many of these poems had actually seen publication in a motely of lit mags, 'zines, & other such rags - what we have here is a considerable passel of Bukowski miscellanea that, due probably to the sheer voluminousness of his major poetic works, a ~forty-year catalog of great entries like "The Days Run Away like Wild Horses Over the Hills," "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, "You Get So Alone at Times...", didn't for one reason or other find inclusion into the pre-posthumous selections.
But this aside, not a few of the poems here represent the roving-blind-and-patently-hostilely-drunk rôle of Bukoswki-cum-Chinaski, in tortured weltering nights of Los Angeles, where, whilst sitting through some privately tremendous gloom, he writes of Mozart and the "parched innards of mountains."
In other poems we easily sympathize with his familiarly topical themes of loss-of-Woman, alcoholism, and the poets either antecedent to him - and to whom he pledges unspecific fidelities for their sometimes influence - or, then, contemporaries of the verbal slingshot; cf. Fante (not an infrequent trope, in fairness), Ginsberg, Mailer, etc.
Always the shitting on Shakespeare and the luxury praise for those like Céline and, of course, one or two lamenting with nearly a fetishistic turn of pen the almost-fates of Dostoyevsky and to an extent the infernal, vitriolic boxer and fisherman, Ernesto Hemingway.
The themes are not unique or otherwise uniquely drawn out, and the determinism of the Bottle is - as always - all too present and, in some cases, prescient - as in the poems wherein he talks of his youthful forays into the looking-glass of a bottle of rye, for instance. It's the obvious sentimentality of Bukowski and it's the obvious resultant charm of this that makes this collection, like so many of his more popular posthumous collections, so, so accessible; and, wonderfully,this is to my knowledge the collection of his most purely free of the sometimes meandering and - IMO - heavily boring cuts about horse-racing.
In the meanwhile,
"waiting for the thunder
that will not be heard,
waiting for the charging
white horse of
Glory,
waiting for the lovely
female who will not
arrive,
waiting to WIN,
waiting for the great
dream to
engulf them
you can only wonder."
-(pp.174, "40,000") -
Great book. Had fun reading. Super last collection by the master: Bukowski. He takes us on a journey thru the modern American human landscape. He is clever and sharp, intense and promiscuous, dismissive and rough. In an easy style, he bares loneliness, inanity and obtuseness that hides within the fold of the fabric of modern life. His style is to be imitated for profit. We see his journey from anonymity to fame, from stress to relative peace. He is observant and penetrating. I read well over a 100 pages of the poems today and felt enlightened, informed and joyous. [Not depressed!] He has his brand of wit and charm. Up with Chinaski!
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Extremely hit and miss postmodern poetry. Section III was the best of the book, and some near the end were great too. It looks like he usually writes mostly the same types of poems (Drinking, Horse Racing, Womanizing, street life, social isolationism, old man complaining, ars poetica, or some combination of the former), but it surprisingly doesn't get old. Despite the extremely varied quality of the poems therein, this collection was a breeze to read, and he's great at getting you to keep on reading. He's magnetic, even if you're abhored by him.
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I was not ready for this.
"...
now I fill my glass
and drink to it all:
to my loyal readers
who have kept me off
skid row,
to my wife and my
cats and my editor
and to my car
which waits in the
driveway
to transport me to the
racetrack tomorrow
and to the last line
I will ever write.
it has been a miracle
beyond all
miracles.
"here's mud in your
eye!" as we used to say
in the thirties.
thank you." -
As always, there is so much beauty in this. Towards the end the poems reflect more and more on mortality. It’s interesting because it doesn’t ask if life was worth it or if there was more to do, it just says death is coming. But that might just be me.
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One of Bukowski's best collections, with an arc from birth to near death.
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Just a few good ones here.
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surprisingly dense, long narrative poems at the beginning, much autobiography, hardly thinning a bit to the end
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Same old stuff from Bukowski. I don't like it as much as I used to but it hits the spot sometimes.
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first bukowski read. mixed feelings, mostly unimpressed.
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One of the better posthumous collections of the Bukowski canon
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If you like Bukaowski, all of his stuff is good.
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There are a few gems in here, but most I could do without.
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I don't tend to worship writers, because I'm a writer myself and I'd find it really weird if one of my few readers worshiped me. Having said that, the fanatical respect that I have for Charles Bukowski comes closer to idolatry than anything else I've experienced in my lifetime.
Bone Palace Ballet is a typical collection of Bukowski's poetry, featuring his musings on women, booze and the races - it can be oddly prophetic at times, too. In 'Good Night, Sweet Prince', for example, he writes that "I will die in 1998 and flying fish will still continue to fly."
He died in 1994, so he was a couple of years out, but it wasn't a bad guess - I'm not sure when the poem was written, but I do know that the poems contained in this collection were part of an archive that the great poet left to be published after his death.
While I doubt he ever feared death (because if he did, he would have taken better care of his body), it does seem like his impending doom was on his mind when this poetry was written. In "Last Will and Testament", for example, he writes: "My wish is simple enough although it may not be granted; that the living dead of this life will not soon die and then follow, after the graciousness of death hopefully rescues me from the monstrous weight of this drizzling suckerfish nightmare."
Bukowski is one of those rare writers who didn't seem to improve with age - his early work is just as good as his later work, and it's difficult to rate any one collection of poetry above any other. While his work can be read chronologically, it's not strictly necessary, and Bone Palace Ballet is as good a book to start with as any other.
His work has mainstream appeal, too - this isn't Walt Whitman, a poet who's best-suited to serious academics and lovers of language. This is Bukowski, the poet of the people who wrote with simple language and captured the concerns of a generation. -
Bone Palace Ballet is a lifelong chronicle of Henry Chinaski, the fictional alter ego of the author Bukowski.
The themes of the poems are a constant reflecting the life of Chinaski which was a constant. The course of his life took a narrow trajectory. Humanity in general was to be shunned. Two dimensional people living their paltry pedestrian lives weren't worthy of his attention. Except for women. Women were always perceived as an opportunity for a worthy diversion.
A diversion from Chinasky world. A world defined by writing, smoking, drinking, and playing the ponies. Those were his parentheses and his glue. That and women were his only reasons to connect with anyone outside of himself. A reluctant capitulation at best.
He was his own romantic hero and ideal. His own best friend and enemy. Always walking a fine line between hope for himself as a poet and a screw it all apathy leading him along an insular path of self destruction.
The story arc quickly hits a plateau. Characters briefly weave in and out of Chinaski's life as he keeps plodding along. The prose was o.k. Not overly inspiring but engaging enough.
This was the first work I've read by Bukowski. It was published posthumously by his wife. I've begun to read Roominghouse Madrigals. An unbelievable contrast. I'd advise those interested in reading Bukowski to skip over Bone Palace. Dive into something first that was published when he was still living.
