Author: Charles Bukowski
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 361
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The volume of work Bukowski is putting out these days is incredible… considering he’s dead.

His posthumous work is hit-or-miss: the majority of poems from his last few years stopped reminiscing on his interesting past and focused instead on his mundane activities of his golden years, (e.g. going to the races, playing with his cats, obsessing over death), and the act of writing (or not writing) the poems themselves. Half the time admitting he’s slipping, the other half defiantly insisting he’s still the best.

Although I’m not a fan of his posthumous work, Open All Night does have a lot of gems, and I feel this is the best posthumous collection Black Sparrow has put out, next to Betting On The Muse. As usual with Buk’s later stuff, many of the poems are just stories written in verse, but this collection features some strong, funny ones that almost parallel his earlier work. He also shines with a lot of great baseball metaphors that illustrates his common themes of frustration and mediocrity (metaphors being rare in his latter-day stripped-down, straight-up approach).

But whether or not most of Buk’s later stuff is derivative at best, I have to admit it’s amazing that he became this poetry machine towards the end, churning out thousands and thousands of poems. Each Black Sparrow collection is 350 to 400 pages of unpublished poems, just an astounding number, and from what I hear, what’s released so far is only the tip. That’s a lotta bang for your Buk.

Bottom Line: One of the better post-humous Buk books.
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