Reads His Poetry

Hostage The San Pedro, California, audience is the hostage referred to in the title of this mid-1980s recording, but clearly they love every minute of it. It's indicative of this infamous, lowlife-lovin' poet's no-nonsense, tough-talking skill that for half the recording the crowd is nea...	The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose ...	Bukowski - Born Into This Documents the life of reclusive writer Charles Bukowski.Genre: DocumentaryRating: RRelease Date: 21-MAR-2006Media Type: DVD	The Charles Bukowski Tapes Fifty-two clips of Charles Bukowski ranting and musing comprise Barbet Shroeder's Charles Bukowski Tapes. It was, until now, a rarity that circulated amongst die-hard Bukowski fans, since the release of Shroeder's Bukowski-scripted feature, Barfly. This collection of monologues, ...	Love is a Dog From Hell Description not available
Notes of a Dirty Old Man "People come to my door-too many of them really-and knock to tell me Notes of a Dirty Old Man turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk. . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give...	Ham on Rye: A Novel In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his a...	Women: A Novel Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, ...	King of Poets A classic Bukowski home recording. You are invited to an intimate audience with the great man talking at his tape machine in New Orleans in 1970. 24 poems, read with the grit & drunken humor that fans have come to know & love. Chinaski Records. 2003.	Factotum One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to anot...

Can't help but feel a bit cheated
As for the material itself, it ranks with Bukowski's best. It demonstrates his wit and charisma easilly. The poems themselves are fantastic. However, this release is simply an edited version of the out of print "Poems and Insults" reading. The legendary performance was released a few years earlier complete and uncut. The producers of this CD obviously had the rights to that performance. This makes me wonder why they cut out several of the poems? Judging how the original performance isn't too hard to find, one can't help but feel a bit cheated when a company sells this album. The poems themselves are fantastic, but why did Takoma Records opt to not include several others. Judging how its hard to find a used copy of the "Poems and Insults" album from a few years ago, customers will have to buy this one for the time being.

An excellent reading but...
This seems to be a resequencing of the recording released as "Poems and Insults" (five stars). It's not terribly different, but I prefer the original version.