Which is your favorite poetry book?

[cirerita]

ok, I'll make the lamest question ever: which is your favourite poetry book?

I know, I know, there's a lot of good unpublished stuff, many of the published poems are shitty, Martin is a good editor but not always, etc. So which is your favourite poetry book as it is? I mean, don't say "Love Is a Dog from Hell" without the first part or "What Matters Most..." but shorter, etc.

ok, today -tomorrow I might change my mind- is Burning in Water... from the early stage and Last Night... from the late stage.

 

[Domator]

In Poland we have only 3 poetry books.
Love is a dog from hell, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame and Sifting through the madness.... At spring Noir Sur Blanc want public next book with poems, but I don't know what it will be.

 

[mjp]

Ah, this one's easy for me; Dangling in the Tournefortia. I read the whole thing in one sitting. There was one amazing stretch of 20 or so poems -- I put down the book and thought, "...damn, every one of these has been really good..." and it still holds up.

As far as earlier work, I had the same feeling reading the Bukowski section of the Penguin Modern Poets series. Every one a winner. Most of the poems were cherry picked from It Catches My Heart In Its Hands and Crucifix in a Deathhand. The Penguin book is kind of a "Best of LouJon," and it's really strong.

 

[HenryChinaski]

Love is a dog from hell, and Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Insturment Untill the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (just for Fire Station) i love that poem.

EDIT: I take that back. My favorite poetry book at this moment is: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946 - 1966
My favorites in this book are:
The Genius Of The Crowd
Old Man Dead In A Room
Love Is a Piece Of Paper Torn To Bits
Farewell, Foolish Objects
Buffalo Bill

Buk's ladder work will never compare to his early stuff.
Is it just me, and I'm sure it isn't but Women totally coincides with Love Is A Dog From Hell. You can match up a lot of the poems with certain parts in the novel. And if you question this, read them one after the other and see what I mean.

 

[HenryChinaski]

And, sorry for the double post but what poetry book does Songs For Sadist Without A Place To Sit Down appear in? I'm sure somebody know's. That's my alltime favorite poem.

 

[mjp]

a song for sadists with a place to sit down
It Catches My Heart In Its Hands - pg. 65 - 1963

All you have to do is click on "Database" over there to the left and you can search for things like this.

 

[HenryChinaski]

I did that but it came up no match.
sorry, maybe I typed it in wrong but I thought it was
A Song For Sadists Without A Place To Sit Down

 

[cirerita]

henry,
if you don't know the title exactly, just type in any key word -"sadists" in this case- and the database will list you all the poems containing that key word in the title.

 

[MarkDB]

Dangling and War

It's a tie for me: Dangling In The Tournefortia and War All The Time.

 

[Ponder]

Change it in: which is your favorite poetry book?

I see the moron line coming....

 

[Eldragon]

Favorite Bukowski poetry book: Dangling in the Tournefortia

 

[Bukfan]

Tough choice! But if I have to choose one:

The Last Night of the Earth Poems.

 

[ROC]

Too many good ones to choose a best.
I know there's some lapse in the quality of the later collections, but I would not be without any of them.
I want them all!

But for the sake of the thread - Dangling in the Tournefortia. My first :o

 

[thebluesman]

def. burning in water, drowning in flame.

that's my bible!

 

[HenryChinaski]

yes, dangling and last nite of the earth poems.

 

[jose leitao]

So far in my rather small collection, I'd say Love is a Dog From Hell. I also love The Captain is Out to Lunch, don't ask why, I guess I'm a sucker for autobiographic material & and diaries of people whose work I admire.

 

[Bukfan]

I guess I'm a sucker for autobiographic material & and diaries of people whose work I admire.

You're not the only one...;)

 

[emku]

Favorite poetry book would be Dangling in the Tournefortia.

Love is a Dog From Hell is right there also.

 

[Eldragon]

I've been rotating his collections for years! Some other works in between from other authors, but it seem I always come back to same stuff? Even when I visit bookstores somehow end-up at his isle. What;s up with that?

 

[HenryChinaski]

Love Is A Dog From Hell is my favorite when I'm having Women troubles. Its weird really, for everything that happens in life, theres always something by Buk that you can read, relate to it, and feel better afterwards. crazy huh?

 

[roni]

In his introduction to Burning he writes:

"...for my critics, readers, friends, enemies, ex-lovers and new lovers, the present volume along with Days and Mockingbird contain what I like to consider my best work written..."

I definitely go along with that - and would only add one of the later ones to go with them: You Get So Alone - God! That's quite a piece! (I wonder no one has mentioned it in this thread so far. In my opp it beats even 'Last Night'.)

Sure, the later collections tended to be bigger than 'Burning', 'Days' and 'Mockingbird', so they had probably more good ones (AND more bad ones) by number in them. But as art-works in the Whole, I'd go with these four.

 

[darren]

i'm gonna go 'play the piano drunk'.. how do ya like that one?

 

[Paul B.]

the days run away.

 

[amusedjames]

ooh.
definately a tie between last night of the earth poems and
you get so alone sometimes...

soooo good.

 

[cirerita]

1996. Somewhere in Europe. Neil Young and Crazy Horse blasting their classics away. End of a song. Applause. A guy from the audience shouts:
"They all sound the same"
To which Neil Young replies right away:
"It's all one song".

Same thing with B. It's all one poem.

 

[procrastinator]

It's impossible to pick just one, but if you were to put a gun to my head and make me pick one I'd say......pull the trigger. No, no, just kidding. I'll go with The Last Night Of the Earth Poems. I want to be buried with that clutched in my hands.

 

[Paul Sempschi]

1996. Somewhere in Europe. Neil Young and Crazy Horse blasting their classics away. End of a song. Applause. A guy from the audience shouts:
"They all sound the same"
To which Neil Young replies right away:
"It's all one song".

Same thing with B. It's all one poem.

Funny, I was about to make that point- it's hard to distinguish book from book (having read snippets of multiple volumes)- they all have the same feel and theme. It's a lot like jazzmen, Coltrane will give you Coltrane, Bird will give you Bird... hey Kafka!

 

[jordan]

i can't pick a favorite... i tend to like the more prose-style poems best (and there are more of those in the early work), but some of the stuff in the posthumous collections just blows my mind... the poems in open all night about jane's death come to mind here. i like all of them- i just ordered bone palace ballet, and i can't wait to read it. it's an unending buffet for me.

 

[ROC]

and hell, then there are the letters - some of them are poetry smeared across the page. I would never be without the three white books of letters.

Burning in Water and Roominghouse would be my most oft read - so I guess it's back to all of the bloody books. No favorites... like children.

 

[ESO9]

Too many good ones to choose a best.

Aye!