What do you guys think of this book?

He is trash

this man, in my country he is nothing

All of these responses, yet no explanations.

I bought this and Hot Water Music at a used book store a few weeks ago. The poems are short and simple enough that I am surprised you would bother coming here to ask Veeky Forums what you should think. Just read it OP and form your own opinion. It was a mistake to come here and ask about Bukowski

you are not going to have any luck here

Thank you.

I recommend The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and City Lights Pocket Poet Anthology user. Both good representations of the kind of poetry Bukowski writes and many of the poets are better than he is. Truth be told Bukowski is respectable for what he is, you never get the sense that he thinks his writing is God's gift to the Earth or even to the kind of people he writes for/about but he still isn't that good. The average country blues song talks about the same things as Bukowski and does it with much more emotion, rhythm and often-times poetry than ol' Buk could ever hope to use. The fact that Bukowski doesn't have any one single poem that's generally hailed as his best like other poets, including other free-verse poets, do is a testament to this.

I, for one, like Buk. He was sincere to the point where people think he's insincere.

Bukowski is what got me into literature, he's a nice starting point for a pleb since he's easy, fun and he name drops a lot of his influences. I prefer his novels over his poems although they are pretty similar in terms of themes. I would recommend you start with Post Office, Ham On Rye or a collection of his short stories and just work your way through his bibliography.

When you're done with Bukowski you could move on to other entry-level writers like Hemingway, Hamsun, Dostojevskij, Celine, Fante, Orwell, Heller, Gatsby, Garcia Marquez... the list could go on.

>Gatsby
I think you mean Fitzgerald?

Good advice. Listen to this guy OP.

don't read books huh? you don't say

You never read but your interested in bukowskis works?

You'll cry the same way a young boy cries after stumbiling into a ferile porno on the internet!

I recomand you watch the bukowski film "barfly" instead before reading his poetry.

>I think you mean Fitzgerald?
No, I mean Jay Gatsby. He's a great writer and OP should check him out after Buk.

He's good for what he is. Lit likes to shit on him, so it was probably a bad idea to make a thread about him & also mention that you aren't a reader in your OP. I'd second what another poster said in this thread about him being a good "entry point" for developing an interest in literature, especially if you are in your late teens / early 20s. Chances are that many posters in this thread used to like Bukowski or some similarly "entry level" author(s) (e.g. Ellis, Palahniuk, Kerouac) when they first started reading, but pretend like they left the womb liking Gaddis, Bolano & other avant-garde authors that get memed constantly on this board.

It's telling that everyone is shitting on Buk's poetry, but no one has specifically mentioned another poet they prefer to him (one poster vaguely referenced other poets in an anthology, so I guess there's that). Poetry is rarely discussed on this board. It's overwhelmingly novels, with some philosophy. I'd recommend Walt Whitman.

The only poetry collection I've read by Bukowski is Last Night of the Earth Poems. I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend. His novels are pretty good too, especially Post Office.

>The fact that Bukowski doesn't have any one single poem that's generally hailed as his best like other poets, including other free-verse poets, do is a testament to this.
Bluebird?

Itt: leddit

it's ok, way better than prose

I don't really like bukowski's prose but I do like his poetry. And I really like that book. He has some limitations regarding themes, but knew how to write, he knew his strenghts and he produced a lot of good poetry.

Disregard people who say he's shit. His style and his themes are raw and crude, yes, but there's some beautiful poetry that can be made that way.

DUDE LIQUOR AND WHORE LMAO

DUDE I HATE PAYING RENT AND WORKING LMAO

Bukowski was a decent writer, it's just that almost every book he wrote had the same plot, and every poem was basically an extension. He struggled writing anything that was based on his life

DUDE LOVE IS A NIGGER LOL

>wasting your time reading this hack degenerate
>being emotionally older than 16
pick one