Point Books As The Last Night of the Earth Poems
| Original Title: | The Last Night of the Earth Poems |
| ISBN: | 0876858639 (ISBN13: 9780876858639) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Charles Bukowski
Paperback | Pages: 408 pages Rating: 4.31 | 5474 Users | 229 Reviews
Narrative To Books The Last Night of the Earth Poems
I am exactly what I am supposed to be.This is likely my favorite collection by Charles Bukowski. A man made famous for his vulgarity and debauchery—though to cling to such things misses the point and heart of his poetry—The Last Night of the Earth Poems removes the caustic armor and lets the tender heart beat out prose without fear, without need for deflection. While it is often the boozing and whoring and bitterness of Bukowski that is spoken of, particularly in college dorms, I've always felt that his abrasive nature was a mask for a fragile soul wincing away from pain, that there was something beautiful and passionate lurking beneath the gutters. Last Night was Bukowski's final collection written while alive and his awareness of inevitable demise creeps into the pages and allows him to speak more freely and passionately than ever before. A fitting collection to be revisiting as I sit silently with my beer, awaiting the next family funeral, awaiting the sharp daggers of held-back tears and gut-clenching awareness of mortality while a man I love and respect breaths through a tube in a nearby hospital with mere days left. Poetry keeps us eternal, keeps our conquests and regrets, our loves and shames alive and on display for all to learn from and imbibe like a fine wine to satisfy the soul and abate our nerves through the knowledge that we all share the same fate and fears and pains. The Last Night of the Earth is a splendid array of all things Bukowski, from his bitter wit to his most impassioned confessions, and is certainly a collection any fan should have at their fingertips.
Confession
waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
I am so very sorry for
my wife
she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again
“Hank!”
Hank won’t
answer.
it’s not my death that
worries me, it’s my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.
I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid
and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:
I love
you.
This collection is nearly painful to read at times. Bukowski offers a reflection on his life that is often funny, bitter and, in this collection, very heartbreaking. The ever-famous Bukowski poem Bluebird is found here (I've never felt much for this poem and wonder about its fame, it feels so detached from his typical style and reminds me of some of his extreme early works that I also didn't care much for as they felt as if he was overtly playing too much at 'being poetic' than simply letting the poetry flow freely as he argues for in many of his fine poems about the art of being a poet), as well as the awe-inspiring Dinosauria, We (you can listen to Bukowski read that poem himself here) and many others. There are angry tirades against false poets, hostile statements towards humanity, yet always a tenderness lurking beneath that reminds us of the importance of being good to one another, of appreciating the life we have, or keeping true to ourselves and striving towards our wildest dreams lest we become another fake and phony that Bukowski so detested. Let yourself be stricken with poverty and debauchery, he would say, as long as it was who you are and you stayed true to yourself. There are powerful statements of the ways literature can move us, memories of being driven to the heights of excitement and passion from Knut Hamsun's Hunger or Huxley's Point Counter Point, the pride in betraying his parents wishes and joining the obscene masses of writers (a absolutely fantastic account of this is found in Them and Us). There are humorous poems on feeling out of touch with the forward-moving world such as in Hemingway Never Did This which recounts accidentally deleting a poem from his computer, or the regret that fame came too late in life to make much use of it as in Creative Writing Class . More heartbreaking is his awareness of death and his testimonies to the agonies of old age. 'young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer,' wrote Bukowski. It truly hurts to read a tired and dying Bukoswki, but it fills the heart to the point of beautiful overflow.
Are You Drinking?
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
"yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts."
"are you drinking?" he will ask.
"are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?"
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
"taking off?" asks the motel
clerk.
"yes, it's boring,"
I tell him.
"If you think it's boring
out there," he tells me, "you oughta be
back here."
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it's just
my cat
this
time.
The Last Night of the Earth Poems is a perfect Bukowski collection that contains all the joys from his range of poetry but keeps to the most heartfelt of messages. While it isn't an ideal introduction to his work, it is certainly a necessity for anyone who holds any love for the man in their heart. Painful as it may be, this is truly brilliant and a perfect examination of a life as it was lived.
4.5/5
'So this is the beginning / not the / end.'
Dinosauria, We
Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.
Itemize Appertaining To Books The Last Night of the Earth Poems
| Title | : | The Last Night of the Earth Poems |
| Author | : | Charles Bukowski |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 408 pages |
| Published | : | May 31st 2002 by Ecco (first published 1992) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Fiction. Classics. Literature. American. 20th Century. Art |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Ratings: 4.31 From 5474 Users | 229 ReviewsCriticize Appertaining To Books The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Best modern poet around. Period. As relevant in 2019 as it would be in any other era. Fantastic. Loved every second of thisLook.I love poetry, but most of it is awful.Bukowski is a sorry bastard, of the sort who has only two friends: Jack Kerouac and Jack, Bottle of.His world is crude and gritty and cruel.Of the whole 400 pages, I found a whole six stanzas that were any good.Yet, I read 400 pages of it. And somehow, I don't regret it.While I dislike Bukowski, the person - or the person who he comes off as, whose life has no light because he is more comfortable angsting in the darkness - it's the pain of the True
Prose-like, not deep, effectively hitting reality, lacking finesse and equally lacking pretense (thats good!), great rhythm, uncovering a spot you had no idea it existed before. In other words, some of his finest poems are right here. Touché.
Le Tigre had a great song titled Mediocrity Rules. A poet loaned me this book. I don't think he liked Bikini Kill. Sometimes I think about Bono and Sean Penn calling Bukowski and I die a little inside. For a number of reasons.
The bluebird Theres a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut Im too tough for him,I say, stay in there, Im not goingto let anybody seeyou.Theres a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I pour whiskey on him and inhalecigarette smokeand the whores and the bartendersand the grocery clerksnever know thathesin there.Theres a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut Im too tough for him,I say,stay down, do you want to messme up?you want to screw up theworks?you want to blow my book
While sitting at the DMV this morning I read a few lines, then looked up to notice a couple arguing with a clerk about license plates. The man was black and had thin, long dreadlocks. The woman wore a pink T-shirt and white draw-string pants which revealed her blue polka-dot underwear. As the disagreement continued her hips and cheeks swayed as she changed positions. Her butt talked a language all its own. Just another Thursday morning at the DMV. If Hank was there he would have stared just like
I knew from the very first page that Charles Bukowski is what I've spent my entire life looking for in a poet. His slice-of-life poems, be they three lines or three pages, are so raw, so simple yet so significant, that they're so perfectly representational of the embittered writer who has both no patience for bullshit and miles upon miles of talent. The word choice, construction and basic subject matter (usually a fleeting moment from Bukowski's life that would have been rendered trite and
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