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

Verse

Charles Bukowski. Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems. John Martin, ed. New York. Ecco. 2003. 397 pages. $27.50. ISBN 0-06-052735-8

THE FIRST of five forthcoming posthumous collections of previously unpublished poems announced by Ecco Press, Sifting Through the Madness contains 150 poems spanning Charles Bukowski's long and prolific career selected by the poet and his lifelong publisher, editor, and promoter, John Martin, the founder of Black Sparrow Press. Like nearly all the numerous books of poetry Bukowski published during his lifetime (almost exclusively with Black Sparrow), the packaging of this one continues the relentless line of public-relations hyperbole in which the author's reputation is touted by such phrases as the "most influential and imitated"...