Cheap shots of piss (1 Viewer)

[Andreas]

This is about 'Dangling in the Tournefortia'.
Do you remember the poem in which the phrase 'cheap shots of piss' has been used?

'Dangling' contains 107 poems.
106 of these had been translated into German.
One single poem was excluded: There are hecklers in Germany too (pg.198).
That's a real shame, because it's a well written and funny poem - and it remains funny, gets even funnier, if you translate it.
Well, that's just a (German) note. What I'd like to know:
If you reflect upon Bukowski's works of poetry, where do you rank 'Dangling in the Tournefortia'?
Are there poems included you like best?

 

[Bukfan]

Funny, the heckler poem was omitted in the German translation. I suspect they were afraid of offending the Germans (the same thing happened with a Disney Donald Duck DVD a few years ago. The old WW II cartoons making fun of Hitler and Mussolini were omitted from the European version of the DVD out of fear of offending the Germans and the Italians). We live in a PC world!
Dangling ranks fairly high in my book, higher than, say, The Rooming House Madrigals, which I rank low. My favorite Dangling poems are The Blue Collar Suicide, I Did´nt Want To, I´m A Reasonable Man, Suckerfish, The Sniveler, The Secret Of My Endurance, We Evolve The and Man At The Piano. Which ones do you like the best?

 

[zobraks]

(For what it's worth) My favo(u)rites from Dangling are: I Didn't Want to, We've Got to Communicate, The Fast Life, Yes, It's Strange, True Confession, Let Nothing Ever Happen, The Vampires, Produced and Bottled by..., Message, The Secret of My Endurance, We Evolve.

Reading Dangling felt pretty much as reading his short stories for me, I got more of that feeling than from any other Bukowski's poem collection I've read (and there are only three to go, including the Martinowski stuff).

P.S. Guess whose favorite poem collection Dangling in the Tournefortia is.

Spoiler: who it is

His nick starts with "m" and ends with "p".

Spoiler: more hints

With "j" between.

That guy praised Dangling in 357 posts at this forum, and he finally made me buy it.

 

[roni]

[...] One single poem was excluded: There are hecklers in Germany too [...]

There's also a passage in 'Hollywood' (chapter 7), where Hank phones with his German agent and translator 'Karl Vossner' that's been left out in the German translation. Pretty sure this was a Weissner-decision (in both cases).

 

[BUKFAN78]

Also a fan of Dangling...
Some of my favourites are: True Confession, We Evolve, The Secret of my Endurance, I Didn't Want To, Suckerfish, and Man at the Piano.

 

[Andreas]

I suspect they were afraid of offending the Germans (the same thing happened with a Disney Donald Duck DVD a few years ago. The old WW II cartoons making fun of Hitler and Mussolini were omitted from the European version of the DVD out of fear of offending the Germans and the Italians).

I've never understood such kind of consideration.
It's all about marketplaces and money, isn't it.

Reading Dangling felt pretty much as reading his short stories for me, ...

You especially get this impression if you've first read Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, like I did, and then directly skip to Dangling in the Tournefortia.
'Short story poems' like The Lady in red (taught me more about America of the early 1930ies than I've learned in school!) or We've got to communicate (an extremely funny monologue, pointing at Linda King).
But, I find it difficult to select poems from this collection which are outstanding, and which make me shout out something like 'Wow, that's a brilliant one! Got to pin it on my wall!'

I like The man at the piano, but that's a quite unusual one, regarding most of the other poems of this collection, isn't it?