CH

AR

LE
S

BU
KO

WS
KI

Born:
Heinrich Karl
August 16, 1920
Andernach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Bukowski

Died:
March 9, 1994 (aged 73)
San Pedro, Los Angeles, U.S.

Nationality:
American

Occupation:
Poet, novelist, short story writer, and columnist
Movement

Dirty realism, transgressive fiction

Charles Bukowski
1920-1994 , Andernach , Germany

Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, on August 16, 1920,

the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of
three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los
Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, then
left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of
publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and
spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding
ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of
jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader,
mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker,
shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly,
and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a
slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New
York City subways.
Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began
writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His writing often featured a
depraved metropolitan environment, downtrodden members of American
society, direct language, violence, and sexual imagery, and many of his
works center around a roughly autobiographical figure named Henry
Chinaski. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to
publish
more than
forty-five
books
of
poetry
and prose,
including Pulp (Black Sparrow, 1994), Screams from the Balcony:
Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth
Poems(1992). He died of leukemia in San Pedro on March 9, 1994.

Poetry
2 by Bukowski (1967)
A Love Poem (1979)
Africa, Paris, Greece (1975)
All the Assholes in the World and Mine (1966)
Another Academy (1970)
At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems, 19551973 (1974)
Cold Dogs in the Courtyard (1965)
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts (1965)
Crucifix in a Deathhand: New Poems, 1963-1965 (1965)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Fire Station (1970)
Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail (1959)
Grip the Walls (1964)
If We Take... (1969)
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands: New and Selected Poems, 19551963 (1963)
Legs, Hips, and Behind (1978)
Longshot Pomes for Broke Players (1962)
Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 (1977)
Love Poems to Marina (1973)
Maybe Tomorrow (1977)
Me and Your Sometimes Love Poems (1972)
Mockingbird, Wish Me Luck (1972)
Nights Work (1966)
On Going Out to Get the Mail (1966)
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument until the Fingers
Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
Poems Written before Jumping out of an 8-story Window(1968)

Poems and Drawings (1962)

Run with the Hunted (1962)
Scarlet (1976)
Sparks (1983)
The Curtains Are Waving (1967)
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses over the Hills (1969)
The Flower Lover (1966)
The Genius of the Crowd (1966)
The Girls (1966)
The Last Generation (1982)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 (1988)
To Kiss the Worms Goodnight (1966)
True Story (1966)
War All the Time: Poems, 1981-1984 (1984)
Weather Report (1975)
While the Music Played (1973)
Winter (1975)
sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way(2003)

Fiction
Barfly (1984)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary
Madness (1972)
Factotum (1975)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Hollywood (1989)
Horsemeat (1982)
Hot Water Music (1983)
Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Pulp (1994)
South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life (1973)
Theres No Business (1984)
Women (1978)
Letters
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)
The Bukowski/Purdy Letters: A Decade of Dialogue, 1964-1974(1983)
Poetry & Prose
Septuagenarian Stew (1990)