
by Charles Bukowski
The life-narrative skills that made Bukowski the finest verse storyteller of his time are still alive and kicking in these verse tales, vivid fragments shored against time's ruin. The dance of death in Bukowski's bone palace takes shape as autobiography: yarns about his Depression childhood and early literary passions (from lusting after his high school English teacher to covertly devouring forbidden' books), his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant ("working on the last bottle of /wine, /the sheets of your / writing strewn across the / floor. / you have walked on and across / them, / your masterpieces, /and/either/they'll be read in /hell, /or perhaps / gnawed at by the/curious/mice"), and finally the bittersweet later years, when, having been rendered by history "just / another old fart in a world of old farts", he nonetheless remains able to look back over his shoulder at Fate with a measure of undefeatable defiance.

by Charles Bukowski
The life-narrative skills that made Bukowski the finest verse storyteller of his time are still alive and kicking in these verse tales, vivid fragments shored against time's ruin. The dance of death in Bukowski's bone palace takes shape as autobiography: yarns about his Depression childhood and early literary passions (from lusting after his high school English teacher to covertly devouring forbidden' books), his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant ("working on the last bottle of /wine, /the sheets of your / writing strewn across the / floor. / you have walked on and across / them, / your masterpieces, /and/either/they'll be read in /hell, /or perhaps / gnawed at by the/curious/mice"), and finally the bittersweet later years, when, having been rendered by history "just / another old fart in a world of old farts", he nonetheless remains able to look back over his shoulder at Fate with a measure of undefeatable defiance.