What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire is the second posthumous collection from Charles Bukowski that takes readers deep into the raw, wild vein of writing that extends from the early 1970s to the 1990s.

One of the most recognizable poets of the last century, Charles Bukowski is simultaneously a common man and an icon of urban depravity. He uses strong, blunt language to describe life as he lives it, and through it all charts the mutations of morality in modern America. Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way is a treasure trove of confessional poetry written towards then end of Bukowski’s life. With the overhang of failing health and waning fame, he reflects on his travels, his gambling and drinking, working, not working, sex and love, eating, cats, and more. Sifting Through is Bukowski at his most meditative – published posthumously, it’s completely non-performative, and gets to the heart of Bukowski’s lifelong pursuit of natural language and raw honesty. We recommend you read this as Bukowski wrote: by sifting through the madness for what hits you as the word, the line, the way.

Charles Bukowski examines cats and his childhood in You Get So Alone at Times, a book of poetry that reveals his tender side. The iconic tortured artist/everyman delves into his youth to analyze its repercussions. “The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

the gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures; Benny finally got off the stuff and Betty now has a job as a waitress; and the chimney sweep was quite delicate as he giggled up through the soot. I walked miles through the city and recognized nothing as a giant claw ate at my stomach while the inside of my head felt airy as if I was about to go mad. it’s not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing, there’s no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust. —from "fingernails; nostrils; shoelaces"

A collection of poems by contemporary American writer Charles Bukowski.

in this place there are the dead, the deadly and the dying. there is the cross, the builders of the cross and the burners of the cross. the pattern of my life forms like a cheap shadow on the wall before me. my love what is left of it now must crawl to wherever it can crawl. the strongest know that death is final and the happiest are those gifted with the shortest journey.

These 189 posthumously published new poems take us deeper into the raw, wild vein of Bukowski's that extends from the early 1980s up to the time of his death in 1994.

The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best poetry from America's most iconic and imitated poet, Charles Bukowski. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary sensibility and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a lifetime of experience, from his renegade early work to never-before-collected poems penned during the final days before his death. Selected by John Martin, Bukowski's long-time editor and the publisher of the legendary Black Sparrow Press, this stands as what Martin calls 'the best of the best of Bukowski'.

This is a collection of 175 previously unpublished works by Bukowski. It contains yarns about his childhood in the Depression and his early literary passions, his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant, and his later years when he looks back at fate with defiance.