Taking no prisoners with this one.

https://www.amazon.com/review/RLRNVSQ35EIM5/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Essential Bukowski: Poetry

1.0 out of 5 stars

Bukowski is excellent but this miserable edition fails to be "essential"

December 23, 2023

I'm a longtime reader of Bukowski and his poems are always welcome, but I encourage readers to find his work online or collect other editions: don’t buy this failed and unserious “essential” edition, you will be disappointed. (And if you want to introduce someone to Bukowski, which maybe is the market here, copy paste from websites instead, or choose one of the Black Sparrow Press editions and trust it will lead to more: it will make a much better gift.)

“Essential Bukowski Poetry” editor Abel Debritto’s weak selection of a scant 95 short poems is bloated to fill out 200 needless pages: many, many, MANY essential Bukowski poems are unforgivably missing (Let It Enfold you, To The Whore Who Took My Poems, What Can We Do?, Poem for my 43rd Birthday, Throwing Away the Alarm Clock... what else “essential” is missing?). And for that matter, given that Bukowski was so massively prolific, what is the rationale, other than economic, to even attempt to limit the "essential" poems to 95? Why not 295? (Uh… try smaller font size maybe?) Doesn’t a “prolific” poet merit a hefty collection before it is worth being called “essential”? Do we get closer to answers when we notice the appalling cheapness of the edition, the flimsy binding, atrocious cover design (unsurprisingly absent from the designer’s online portfolio), and poor quality paper and ink? Is HarperCollins just after a buck here, to tap into the “I want to give Bukowski as a Christmas gift” market, cutting all available corners? Doesn’t Bukowski deserve better?

For truly appreciating Bukowski there are more obstacles: there is no table of contents or index; the only listing of poems is at the end with original citations of prior publication, but this is of no use… since we are told that the collection also includes previously unpublished work. So you cannot be sure if a poem is here or not unless you skim the entire book. The editor's introduction is a barely high-school level fluff piece that just adds insult: we are offered a laundry list of titles with trite adjectives such as "striking" and "simplicity" and "snapshots" and "brilliance" and "surreal" (the last any poetry teacher knows must be stricken from serious critique, unless one wants to claim lineage to DalÍ and compatriots). What about Bukowski's actual life as a poet? The editor in his introduction can only muster, as if first glance by a casual reader might miss it, the tediously reiterated "alcoholic" and "macho persona”. Why emphasize, and without any elaboration or reflection whatsoever, what the poet himself already makes plain? How does this add anything? We expect an introduction to "essential" poems to make a critical case for why a poet deserves acclaim, how the work came about, and why they make a mark in both the history of poetry and also the hearts and ears of readers. Unless we are talking down to people, which is what I expect Debritto is doing. Just repeating that Bukowski is "striking" and "writes with simplicity" and reminding us he drank a lot - he litterally writes poems about “beer shits” so there is no uncertainty about his alcohol consumption that somehow needs to be cleared up - offers no insight and adds nothing to our appreciation of the poems.

This book doesn’t get us closer to Bukowski or closer to why he is such a powerful, delightful, and moving writer (and if we were consistent with Debritto’s preoccupation with alcohol consumption where would we stop exactly? How many poets, novelists…? And then why not discuss chain smoking and cannabis and speed as well? Why? Because no case can be made that any of this matters to the work itself as art in itself. We don’t care whether the person who wrote Bluebird was high or beat his wife; we need to know nothing about who he she or they were: we just read the poem - or even just hear it, no literacy is needed at all, it is a truly universal poem and lends well to translation - and cry because it is human, it speaks to us, it is beautiful, it is art - and read closely it engages all the themes of Bukowski's personal life - he is present in every word). Discussion of drugs sex violence etc etc is only part of interest in broader biographical background as a whole: to focus on substance use above other aspects of biography — what does Bukowski’s immigrant background tell us for example - just betrays prejudice and stigma.

It is almost as if Debritto just doesn't really like Bukowski as a poet at all: in the end he has only done Bukowski further disservice, dismissing Bukowski’s real craft, talent, discipline (yes discipline!) and inspiration by instead reminding us once, twice more that his output came amidst alcohol hazes. What is the point? Lots of artists' work comes out of drug hazes: Bukowski just wrote about it instead of keeping it behind the curtain.

Bukowski was in fact formally trained as a poet and had a deep appreciation for and background in poetry and literature: that he reads so “simple” and “authentic” is a reflection of his skill, not evidence of its lack. To attempt poetry that appeals to both poetry readers and the general public, as Bukowski intended, is to attempt a feat of talent and genius. It is a task fit for a true artist, and Bukowski succeeds.

Debritto seems to even think that Bukowski’s massive output undermines the case for his talent, where the opposite is true: many artists create and discard as unpublished unproduced unreleased much of their creation, in the search for the work that shines. Debritto seems to devalue his subject, and wants us to believe Bukowski’s success was somehow accidental, his work haphazard. emerging by chance from frantic overproductivity, that anyone sufficiently drunk and macho can write alcohol-fueled knock-offs of “simple” and “authentic” poems . Ok you keep believeing that. The rest of us see in Bukowski something very special: a great poet. He succeeded precisely because he mastered the craft, not because he disregarded it. Help us understand how and why, and then you can call yourself editor of an “essential” collection.

I bought this because I want the essential poems in one volume, but too many are missing. I bought this because I want my appreciation deepened, but the editor failed. Someday we will have in one print volume the true “essential Bukowski poems”, but this is not it.