The Last Night of the Earth Poems

by Charles Bukowski

Overview

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author

“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

In The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Charles Bukowski's gritty poems deal with writing, death and immortality, literature, city life, illness, war, and the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061857171
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/17/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	408
Sales rank:	867,155
File size:	428 KB

About the Author

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 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

Date of Birth:

August 16, 1920

Date of Death:

March 9, 1994

Place of Birth:

Andernach, Germany

Place of Death:

San Pedro, California

Education:

Los Angeles City College, 2 years

Editorial Reviews

``A. Huxley died at 69/ much too early for such a/ fierce talent.'' Now in his seventh decade, Bukowski is preoccupied with death, but in such a way that he spices his usual flat monotone with bits of welcome humor. While continuing his focus on life in bars and at the racetrack, these poems enlarge the meditative tone begun in You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense ( LJ 1/87). Bukowski remembers the first time he read great authors or heard classical composers; he reflects on old friends, co-workers, and lovers, but with a new gentleness, as in ``Darkling,'' a wonderfully lyric love poem to his wife. Poems such as this make it easier to spot the poetic craft at work behind Bukowski's understated common speech. Finally, the poet's emphasis on reflection and mellowed tone will, one hopes, enlarge the poet's huge but specialized readership.-- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, ``Soho Weekly News,'' New York

Library Journal

How does Bukowski, undoubtedly the most published of contemporary American poets, maintain his integrity among the admirers and sycophants? A: he has no integrity; or B: he only writes about what he knows. Published by Black Sparrow Press, 24 Tenth Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews