The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems - Hardcover

Bukowski, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060577010 ISBN 13: 9780060577018

Publisher: Ecco, 2003

Synopsis

Throwing away the alarm clock my father always said, "early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." It was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon and scrambled eggs. My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise. Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise. Now, I'm not saying I've conquered the world but I've avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls and have met some strange, wonderful people one of whom was myself -- someone my father never knew.

About this title

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.

From the Back Cover

Throwing away the alarm clock my father always said, "early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." It was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon and scrambled eggs. My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise. Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise. Now, I'm not saying I've conquered the world but I've avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls and have met some strange, wonderful people one of whom was myself -- someone my father never knew.

Reviews

The second volume of poems Bukowski left unpublished when he died does not contain many fights, arguments with women, or eruptions at parties. Most of it seems to have been written very late; indeed, one of its most effective passages consists of poems about his hospitalization during treatment for terminal leukemia, and several other poems look toward death with a calmness that verges on nobility. Oh, he stayed true to his jaundiced, damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't outlook, and he remained capable of f----th'-bastids rants against politics, business, and armed authorities. But he couldn't muster spontaneous ill-will as of old, and he actually let go of grudges. He became sympathetic of as well as to others. Read "the old girl" to appreciate this, for he relents and gives an irascible beggar he has spurned for years credit for endurance in the "self-same trap" we're all in; so doing, he rouses the impulse to feel for him, not just laugh with him. This is mellow Buk. Fancy that! Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060577010
• ISBN 13: 9780060577018
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320