Reviews for The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain

The average rating for The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-29 00:00:00 Steven Pearlston As much as I love the fire and beerspit of Buk's early works, the honest beauty and abrupt wit of his poems are most evident in his later stuff. Bukowski wears the perspective of an older man well. This collection was a bit more structured than others I've read, both in terms of the book's arrangement (there was a deliberate and apparent pattern in the poems' organization) and in the actual construction of the poems -- form isn't something I've come to expect from literature's favorite dirty old man. It was a little jarring and it did make the flow drag a bit in patches. A turbulent history and failing health clearly are the driving forces behind these collected works. But instead of falling into sentimental stickiness, the dryly humorous observations Bukowski does so well are expertly executed here. At an age when most writers are losing the best of their art, Buk's showing that his lifetime was spent becoming a master of the craft.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-04 00:00:00 Gabriel Calderon Ecco Press has published several volumes of posthumous poetry from Charles Bukowski. I first became a fan of Buk's in the early '90's when I was a young man just starting out. Each collection is full of raw vitality, but as a warning "Hank" is not for every reader. There are several previously unpublished gems here, and old themes sometimes revisited. I admire Bukowski's work mostly because it shows that a non-academic can succeed in the literary world with a lot of persistence and effort, but also of course a little luck, too, goes a long way. Bukowski is truly the Bard of East Hollywood.