Dangling in the Tournefortia by Charles Bukowski

Dangling in the Tournefortia Reviews

• 
  Philip Fullmam

  I do this thing when I read poetry collections, I understand it's not uncommon. When I read a poem that really resonates with me, I go to the table of contents and put a star next to the title. With this book I found I was going to put a mark next most every poem I read, it was becoming a distraction. I finally gave it up, and just read. Of all the Bukowski I have read, this is my favorite collection.
• 
  Peycho Kanev

  Yes
  
  no matter who I’m with
  people always say,
  are you still with her?
  my average relationship lasts
  two and one half years.
  with wars
  inflation
  unemployment
  alcoholism
  gambling
  gambling
  and my own degenerate nervousness
  I think I do well enough.
  I like reading the Sunday papers in bed.
  I like orange ribbons tied around the cat’s neck.
  I like sleeping up against a body that I know well.
  I like black slips at the foot of my bed
  at 2 in the afternoon.
  I like seeing how the photos turned out.
  I like to be helped through the holidays:
  4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving,
  Christmas, New Year’s.
  they know how to ride these rapids
  and they are less afraid of love than I am.
  they can make me laugh where professional comedians
  fail.
  there is walking out to buy a newspaper together.
  there is much good in being alone
  but there is a strange warmth in not being alone.
  I like boiled red potatoes.
  I like eyes and fingers better than mine that can
  get knots out of shoelaces.
  I like letting her drive the car on dark nights
  when the road and the way have gotten to me,
  the car radio on
  we light cigarettes and talk about things
  and now and then
  become silent.
  I like hairpins on tables,
  on the floor.
  I like knowing the same walls
  the same people.
  I dislike the insane and useless fights which always
  occur
  and I dislike myself at these times
  giving nothing
  understanding nothing.
  I like boiled asparagus
  I like radishes
  green onions.
  I like to put my car into a car wash.
  I like it when I have ten win on a six to one
  shot.
  I like my radio which keeps playing
  Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler.
  I like it when there’s a knock on the door and
  she’s there.
  no matter who I’m with
  people always say,
  are you still with her?
  
  they must think I bury them in
  the Hollywood Hills.
  
  The Secret of my Endurance
  
  I still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-up
  men in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who are
  living with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
  booze and madness.
  Most of their letters are on lined paper
  written with an unsharpened pencil
  or in ink
  in tiny handwriting that slants to the
  left
  and the paper is often torn
  usually halfway up the middle
  and they say they like my stuff,
  I’ve written from where it’s at, and
  they recognize that. truly, I’ve given them a second
  chance, some recognition of where they’re at.
  
  it’s true, I was there, worse off than most
  of them.
  but I wonder if they realize where their letters
  arrive?
  well, they are dropped into a box
  behind a six-foot hedge with a long driveway leading
  to a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,
  animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about half
  paid after a year, a new car,
  fireplace and a green rug two-inches thick
  with a young boy to write my stuff now,
  I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a
  typewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
  belt him pretty good three or four times
  a week.
  I’m 59 years old now and the critics say
  my stuff is getting better than ever.
• 
  Kacey

  "I have to tell you, faithfulness, that's something rare."
  
  I feel like this started off a little slow, but the poems got progressively better as the collection went on. By the end, I was loving it. This collection reminded me of how much I like Bukowski's poems. They are all so raw and unfiltered and that's what makes them great for me.
• 
  Vishal

  What else can I say about Bukowski's poetry, but that he inspires me to be one. To channel all the cumulative suffering into the creation of something equally tragic but not as meaningless.
• 
  Dane Cobain

  It’s always difficult to review a Charles Bukowski book, because they usually leave me feeling somewhat stunned. It’s like being assaulted by words and beat around the head until you get to the final page and realise it’s left you with a minor concussion. But that’s a good thing – Bukowski truly had a way with words, and in many ways he’s at his best here. Although equally, it’s hard to recommend any one of his poetry books above another.
  
  That’s because each of Bukowski’s collections has a sort of soul of its own, and this one has an older soul to go with the age of the man who wrote it. That’s not to say that he avoids any of his traditional subjects, though – women, booze and horses are out in force here. But he does look at them with the advantage of age, and it’s interesting to see how that changes his opinion on things over time.
  
  Overall though, this is just a rock solid poetry collection with some incredible chunks of wisdom on offer. You know what you’re getting with a Bukowski book – if you’ve read one before, that is – and this is a pretty typical example. Because of that, it’s not a bad collection to start with, especially because if anything, he’s a little tamer here. It reads like the collection of a man who’s finally coming to terms with his life, which in many ways, it is. That means it’s not always easy to read, but it is always sublime, and it’s entertaining along the way too. Give it a go!
• 
  Dave Matthes

  Somebody dig this man up from his grave and slap him across his rotten face, tell him enough with the horse track poems, tell him they're bad, real bad! They're real bad, Hank, if I have to read another line about you at the track I'm gonna jump right outta my third story window and aim for my fucking head!
  
  But the rest is great. The rest reminds me of conversations I've had with lesser people, including my own self in the dead of empty night sometimes long ago and far away, sometimes more recent, like yesterday morning as I was dancing drunk in my robe listening to Jim Morrison talk about some wasp thing.
  
  I've got this first edition of this book (the one published in 1981, not this impostor 1982 edition listing on this shit website) and the pages still smell like an antique store. I should probably do some research into what causes old books to smell like this, the scent reminds me of everything good in life, and most of the poems on these pages do too, even the sad ones. Because sadness is good, hey, it really is good to be sad sometimes.
• 
  Paul

  A very solid time frame for Bukowski. He was at the top of his writing powers, and letting his poems run free, without forcing them or thinking he had to be a Poet rather than a poet. His poems here have a great deal of pain, a rather greater amount of pride, and the brash simplicity of his thoughts echo that subset of my own thoughts that are probably best left unstated.
  
  I often wonder how often Buk himself stated these thoughts out loud. It's very easy to confess your hatred and desires (and the combination of the two) to a beer can: did he do it in real life? I mean, I know he could be an asshole in real life...but could he do it and still be a poet?
  
  Doesn't really matter. He did it here and I like it. And it soothes me to know that I'm not alone.
• 
  Jake

  One of my favorite late era Bukowski books. (Late era=after he gained fame and fortune in his 50s as a dirty old man who'd been writing for decades working shit jobs and living on skid row, writing all the while). What's nice about Bukowski is that, since he lived a rough life before anyone ever recognized his writing, he can admit that driving BMWs into valet parking and sunning himself under a mango tree while his former coworkers are still working at various post offices and factories or are dead in the gutter is pretty nice. He wrote this about a couple of his favorite writers, and it applies to him as well:
  
  lines laid down
  neatly
  dried blood
  crisp on the page
  
  .
• 
  Gretchen

  Ehhhh... This isn't going to make sense but here goes: Some of these poems were good and some were not. But also, all of them seemed exactly the same. To me they were mostly indistinguishable from each other. I suppose I prefer Bukowski's novels to his poetry.
• 
  Kayden Purvis

  Mid Bukowski tbh
• 
  Tom Quinn

  I'm not a poetry fan, but I am a Bukowski fan. Some of these poems leap off the page and attack your brain with a ferocity unlike anything else. Others are little more than prose with funny line breaks. It's a mixed bag. Plus the content grows repetitive. Maybe it was a bad idea to read them all one after another.
  
  But then again, it could be that I'm just a poetry-hating philistine.
  
  2.5 stars out of 5.
• 
  Andrew

  When I read Bukowski's poems I always feel like we're at a bar together and have much to drink. He's learning over to me with awful breath and telling me every tale that he can think of. We've known each other awhile and he's not much interested in what I have to say, but that's never bothered me.
• 
  Jon Awerman

  I enjoyed this immensely. It's fascinating to follow his progression as a poet and human throughout his life. There's a lot of shit in here, but it is outweighed by the beauty he more often than not stumbles upon.
• 
  Datschneids

  Probably my favorite of Bukowski. His ability to turn his extremely nihilistic viewpoints into meaningful (and often sad) prose is uncanny. Sometimes a glass-half empty approach helps one look at life a bit more objectively.
• 
  Ron

  The man's brilliant. You know it. I know it. What else can I say. This collection is from his later years. A bit tamer, with that old man scent, but still rock-n-roll.
• 
  Steven

  One of the weaker collections of Bukowski poetry I've ever read. Most of the poems were extremely similar, most of them were also quite bad with a couple good ones. Interestingly, I have a used copy of this, and the previous owner has written little notes all over it.
  
  All the notes are them talking shit about the especially bad poems.
• 
  lalith

  At night with a drink in hand, it made sense. A real sense.
• 
  Brandon

  Average collection of Bukowski poems, simple slices of life that are at times sort of boring. I hate it when Bukowski writes about his BMW, or when he complains about fans calling him on the phone. But all is not lost! There is a good cat poem in this collect ("Bad Fix") and a good poem about his father ("Slow Night"). Then there are two memorable and rather disturbing pedophilic poems: "A Gallon of Gas" and "True Confession." If I had a favorite poem in this collection it might have been "For the Little One" or maybe "Genius." Others I didn't hate: "Guest," Contemporary Literature, One," "The Woman From Germany," "Time Is Made To Be Wasted," "I Didn't Want To," "Platonic," and "It's Strange."
• 
  Brian Pappas

  Sometimes you get a book of poetry that is so good you try and make it last as long as possible.
• 
  Josh Sherman

  Among his best—the Sherwood Anderson poem stands out.
• 
  Brad

  A huge collection of some of Bukowski's inner ramblings. Many were great, some were merely good, almost all were entertaining. He focused on what he did best -- drinking, gambling, sex. Two good quotes:
  
  "There is much good in being alone
  but there is a strange warmth in not being alone." (yes)
  
  "I lost my enthusiasm for the masses at age 4." (the embracers)
  
  And one poem that I'm going to keep coming back to:
  
  we evolve
  at first it seems like fucking is the big thing,
  
  then after that ? social consciousness,
  
  then intellectual accomplishment,
  
  and after that
  
  some fall into religion
  
  others into the arts.
  
  after that begins the gathering of money
  
  the stage we pretend that
  
  money doesn?t matter.
  
  then it?s health and hobbies,
  
  travel, and finally just sitting around
  
  thinking vaguely of vague things,
  
  rooting in gardens
  
  hating flies, noise, bad weather, snails,
  
  old friends, drunks, smoking, fucking,
  
  singing, dancing, upstarts,
  
  the postman and the weeds.
  
  it gives one the fidgets: waiting on
  
  death.
  
• 
  Will (Wildes) Lawler

  I’m a big Bukowski fan but this collection was incredibly disappointing. The enjambment and lineation is repetitive and lazy and is significantly more prose than poetry. I could not read the last 100 pages because I started to get so angry about everything. The degree of misogyny and sexism was ridiculous and has made me rethink my perception of Bukowski. I loved ‘The Days Run Away Like Horses Over The Hills’ because poems that were sexist to a degree and the abuse of alcohol were consistent with the collections voice being reckless, self-destructive and in a toxic state of grieving from his late wife. For ‘Dangling Over The Tournefortia’, it reads as overly abusive, sexist and offensive and connected with his personality rather than a period of his life. I’m not saying that behaviour like this and his clear disrespect for women is justifiable in any way whatsoever, and grieving isn’t an excuse, but there is no narrative of any sort in this collection. The lack of technique, depth, the narrow subject matter and obscenity was infuriating to read.
• 
  Sarah Kane

  one of his best. a true reminder of why Bukowski is worthy of admiration and why so many try to imitate him. his observations offer a unique perspective of someone who has had both nothing and everything, and in fact it’s part of his swagger. his unrelenting honestly also cannot be denied - one could argue in regards to the misogynist or creepy elements of his work that he knows exactly what he’s doing and is in fact facing his shadow and owning his darkness in a way that is *almost* respectable; there is a sadness and a pointed self awareness in his tone that suggests a desire to be better. unfortunately, he doesn’t NEED to be better; he can be bad as he wants. this is where Bukowski falls short - never offering a will to change or initiating any progress as an individual. the poems get better regardless of the drinking, the women stay despite his neglect, and he is okay being the self effacing loser of literature as long as he’s winning at the race track.
• 
  E

  somehow, i can still find comfort between bukowski's lines. it wasn't his greatest poetry but some of it hit just right.
  
  i think the comfort lays in reading about adverse conditions, foreign underground life, disinterest in life. it is highly unlikely that i'll ever drink six-packs until the morning and get up for a horse race at 11am. but i can almost understand the escape. when the interviewers and young writers come to him, i can almost understand why he can't give them what they want.
  
  bukowski's poems are just stories of loneliness and isolation. they can be problematic and it's not the hardest to dislike him. at the same time, when he drives around and contemplates on people and death, i can understand the desire for chaos. bukowski deserved to see tournefortia bloom but in his heart i think it was burning.
• 
  Dwhale

  sayfa 271
  
  evriliriz
  
  önceleri düzüşmektir en büyük şey,
  ondan sonra - toplum bilinci,
  sonra entelektüel başarılar,
  ve ondan sonra
  kimi kendini dine verir
  kimi sanata.
  sonra para edinme safhası başlar
  ve para edinildikten sonra
  paranın önemi yokmuş gibi yaptığımız
  aşama gelir.
  sonra sağlık ve hobiler
  seyahat ve sonunda öylece
  oturup müphem şeylere dair
  müphem düşüncelere kapılırsın,
  bahçede köklenme,
  sineklerden, gürültüden, kötü havadan,
  salyangozlardan, kalabalıktan, beklenmeyenden,
  yeni komşulardan, eski arkadaşlardan, ayyaşlardan,
  sigara içmekten, düzüşmekten, dans etmekten, yeni zenginlerden,
  postacıdan ve ayrık otlarından
  nefret edersin.
  insanı huzursuz eder: ölümü
  beklemek
• 
  Martín

  we evolve
  
  at first it seems like fucking is the big thing,
  then after that—social consciousness,
  then intellectual accomplishment,
  and then after that
  some fall into religion
  others into the arts.
  after that begins the gathering of money
  and after the gathering of money
  the stage where we pretend that
  money doesn’t matter.
  then it’s health and hobbies,
  travel, and finally just sitting around
  thinking vaguely of vague things,
  rotting in gardens
  hating flies, noise, bad weather, snails,
  rudeness, the unexpected, new neighbors,
  old friends, drunks, smoking, fucking,
  singing, dancing, upstarts,
  the postman and weeds.
  it gives one the fidgets: waiting on
  death.
  
• 
  IGNACIO ROMERO

  Uno más, el último del año.
  Bukowski escribió el cartero, su primer libro, en 1971, cuando tenía 51 años.
  Eso me da esperanzas.
  Este lo publicó diez años después, cuando ya era un escritor conocido, cuando manejaba un BMW y había dejado de trabajar en las fábricas y de dormir en pensiones inmundas.
  Y lo mejor de este libro, es que se ríe de eso también.
  Bukowski atravesó el fuego, y cuando llegó al cielo, se rió de eso también. Y vivió su vida, sin intentarlo.
  Eso es lo que lo hizo ser, el más grande de todos los tiempos.
• 
  Dana

  platonic
  "she wanted a platonic afternoon and I said, all right
  but what can we do?
  
  and she said, I like to talk.
  
  so I took her to the racetrack and we
  talked.
  
  ...
  after she got in the car
  and started the engine
  she leaned out the window
  kissed me on the cheek.
  and drove off.
  
  well, like they said:
  sex wasn't everything.
  there was the soul too.
  I walked back into my place
  and started looking for
  mine."