Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems

From Publishers Weekly
When HarperCollins and Ecco Press acquired part of the Black Sparrow imprint early this year, one big prize was the sprawling, long-popular oeuvre of Charles Bukowski (Barfly; Ham on Rye; Love Is a Dog from Hell). Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems, Bukowski's 10th posthumous volume (with several more planned), collects yet more verse about the troubled, garrulous poet's traveling, gambling, thinking, aging, working, not working, romancing, drinking, self-mythologizing and even eating ("I opened a can of roastbeef hash/ and some pickled beets") as he fought through his blue-collar, beer-hall L.A. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Mother o' mercy, is this the end of Buk, nearly nine years after his death? Well, no, for his new publisher--Black Sparrow Press proprietor John Martin having retired and closed that long-lived, successful, and important small literary house--promises four best-of collections, their contents handpicked by Buk himself. But yes, apparently, it is the end in terms of all-new collections. And a fine valedictory this is, one of the most purely enjoyable entries in the Bukowski canon. The poems in it are all as autobiographical as their not-Bukowski "I" referent, Buk's perpetual stand-in--drinkin', screwin', horse-playin', typin' Henry Chinaski-- allows. As usual, they are chock-full of gripes, curses, petty rebellions, cocked snooks, long-suffering mutterings, Pyrrhic victories, and the other expressions of malcontent that were Buk's stock-in-trade for some 40 years. Perhaps he was a rhetorician, a ranter, more than a real poet, but for sure he was a humorist, one of the greatest in American literature, in prose as well as verse. If you aren't amused by him, what good are you? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
from "neither Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane" young young young, only wanting the Word,
going mad in the streets and in the bars,
brutal fights, broken glass, crazy women
screaming in
your cheap room,
you a familiar guest at the drunk tank, North
Avenue 21, Lincoln Heights
sifting through the madness for the Word, the
line
the way,
hoping for a check from somewhere,
dreaming of a letter from a great editor:
"Chinaski, you don't know how long we've been waiting for you!"
no chance at all.


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All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Black Sparrow will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.


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