101 Famous Poems

Charles Bukowski

Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems

"Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and The Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review "He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels."--Leonard Cohen, songwriter Los Angeles slums, bars, and more are featured in Slouching Toward Nirvana , the third of five books of unpublished poems from Charles Bukowski, considered by many to be America's most imitated and influential poet.

Carolyn Forche

Blue Hour

" Blue Hour is an elusive book, because it is ever in pursuit of what the German poet Novalis called 'the [lost] presence beyond appearance.' The longest poem, 'On Earth, ' is a transcription of mind passing from life into death, in the form of an abecedary, modeled on ancient gnostic hymns. Other poems in the book, especially 'Nocturne' and 'Blue Hour, ' are lyric recoveries of the act of remembering, though the objects of memory seem to us vivid and irretrievable, the rage to summon and cling at once fierce and distracted. "The voice we hear in Blue Hour is a voice both very young and very old. It belongs to someone who has seen everything and who strives imperfectly, desperately, to be equal to what she has seen. The hunger to know is matched here by a desire to be new, totally without cynicism, open to the shocks of experience as if perpetually for the first time, though unillusioned, wise beyond any possible taint of a false or assumed innocence." -- Robert Boyers

Charles Bukowski

Come on In!: New Poems

another comeback climbing back up out of the ooze, out of the thick black tar, rising up again, a modern Lazarus. you're amazed at your good fortune. somehow you've had more than your share of second chances. hell, accept it. what you have, you have. you walk and look in the bathroom mirror at an idiot's smile. you know your luck. some go down and never climb back up. something is being kind to you. you turn from the mirror and walk into the world. you find a chair, sit down, light a cigar. back from a thousand wars you look out from an open door into the silent night. Sibelius plays on the radio. nothing has been lost or destroyed. you blow smoke into the night, tug at your right ear. baby, right now, you've got it all.