Really enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. I'm not usually a person that enjoys too much gritty realism in my reading since the world seems to have more than enough of it already, however, Bukowski is able to negate any distaste I would usually feel towards this type of writing, and he does it without me even really noticing.

It's been some time since I wrote poetry but he has me contemplating my return to the frey already. Strange, it's really not my type of writing. Anyway, grab a copy of this one and let it work it's magic.

Excellent. ( )

It's fitting that I started reading this shortly after moving to LA.
My favorites:
1. silly damned thing anyhow
2. we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain
3. something's knocking at the door
4. fooling Marie (the poem) ( )

Highly enjoyed and will go down as one of my most favorited book of poetry. This book will probably be my most revisited book of poetry. ( )

A comprehensive overview of Bukowski's career as a poet. Features his best known work. This thick volume is really the only book of his you need. Plenty of drunken musings. The kind of insights one can only really have after a long, meaningless life. Our untapped cruelty to one another, the redeeming qualities of love, everything in between. It's all here.

I wish I loved something the way he loved classical music. ( )

A compelling collection of Bukowski's poetic career, from his early days through to his old age. It is a collection of great scope, including unpublished poems and those discovered after his death. However, despite this it regrettably fails to be comprehensive. Exemplary pieces like 'Dinosauria, We', 'Mind and Heart' and 'The Bluebird' are present, but many notable poems are not. Two of my favourites – 'Nirvana' and 'The Laughing Heart' – are absent, and both are well-known pieces. Of course, with a writer as prolific as Bukowski, people can always say "you should have included such-and-such", but these two in particular seem like glaring omissions.

Despite its variety, The Pleasures of the Damned manages to keep a consistent tone throughout: hard-boiled cynicism and a tough shell housing a sensitive core. Bukowski wanted the world to be fair and beautiful and when he found that it wasn't he drank and swore and raged, not only at the fact that it wasn't but at the fact that many people convinced themselves it was. I've always liked his turns-of-phrase and his cynicism, but in reading this collection I was reminded of how perceptive he was of character, of getting to the dark and hopeless heart of people in a line or two. More than his stories and his novels, this worldview comes through most clearly in his poetry, and that's probably where you have to go to really uncover the man's soul. It is also where the most balm is to be found for readers; Bukowski's not for everyone but for many his words and sentiments prove an outlet for their frustration and disappointment. As he says himself, he "knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps" (pg. 415).

Favourites include: 'Eulogy', 'Turnabout', 'Trashcan Lives', 'Hell is a Lonely Place', 'For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough', 'Man Mowing the Lawn Across the Way from Me', 'Bruckner (2)', '3:16 and One Half', 'The 1930s', 'The Burning of the Dream', 'Finish', 'The Wine of Forever', 'The Replacements', 'Dinosauria, We', 'Mind and Heart' and 'The Bluebird'. ( )