Slouching toward Nirvana : new poems / Charles Bukowski ; edited by John Martin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bukowski, Charles.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

270 pages : portrait ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Ecco, [2005]

Summary:

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

During his lifetime Bukowski published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001), Sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: New Poems (2003), and The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004).

All of his books have now been published in translation in more than a dozen languages, and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and prose.

Contents:

A 4th of July in the early 30's 3

Without stress or agony 9

My close call 12

Clothes cost money 13

An easy way to die 17

We have hand guns around here 19

Making do 20

Rare indeed 27

The Poet 28

Bolero 31

A winter memory 34

Living in a great big way 36

Then and now 37

How did they get their job? 44

Paper and people 45

Writer's block 49

Disorder and early sorrow 51

In this place 54

The uninitiated 55

Cicada 57

Never interrupt a writer at work 58

Oh my 59

Meeting them 60

No eulogies, please 62

Finality 64

The machinery of loss 65

Damsels of the night 69

Forewarned 74

She lost weight 75

Military surplus 76

A difficult woman 79

Talk 81

Where the action is real 83

Academy Award? 86

Beach boys 88

I'm no good 90

Friend of the family 92

Solving a crime before it begins 94

Note for my wall 96

The wine that roared 97

2:07 a.m. 101

A clean, well-lighted place 105

Do we really care? 108

For crying out loud 111

High school girls 113

Emergency 115

For a woman who might some day become a nun 116

Some people ask for it 117

Against the Window pane 119

An answer to a day's worth of mail 121

New York, New York 122

The knife Waltz 125

Dusty shoes 126

Vulgar poem 128

This one 134

The big lonely night 140

One a.m. 145

The curse 147

With his awful teeth 149

Golden boy 151

Surreal tangerines 153

Little magazines and poetry chapbooks 155

My buddy 156

Last Friday night 158

Open here 160

A name is nothing if the named is nothing 161

The stupidest thing I ever did 163

You can't make a lion out of a butterfly 165

I don't know about you but 168

It's a drag just breathing 172

A hard lesson 175

A conversation to remember 177

Picture show 178

He played first base 179

The suicide kid 181

Snake eyes and faulty screams 183

I fought them from the moment I saw light 184

Now, Ezra 187

Concession 189

It 190

Terror 191

My rosy ass 193

This is a bitter poem 196

Poem for nobody 199

Checkmate 201

The Tide 202

To hell and back 210

Something's knocking at the door 212

Regardless 214

The dandy 219

I am a mole 221

Somebody else 222

IBM Selectric 224

Why oh why and oh why not? 227

Movies 228

No luck at all 229

Good news 232

Bedpan nightmare 234

Robert 237

Private screenings 239

As you slow down the mermaids look the other way 241

Something new 243

The swimming pool 244

The great writer 246

I used to think 247

From the department of health 249

Working out 251

My friend William Burroughs 252

A note upon starvation 254

Poem for my 70th birthday 256

You'll never know 257

Joe 259

Top gun 263

It's strange 264

Explosion 266

Small talk 268

Basic 270.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0060577037

OCLC:

55657700