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

Bukowski, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060577029 ISBN 13: 9780060577025

Publisher: Ecco, 2005

Synopsis

The second of five new books of unpublished poems from the late, great, Charles Bukowski, America's most imitated and influential poet –– 143 never–before–seen works of gritty, amusing, and inspiring verse.

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

The second of five new books of unpublished poems from the late, great, Charles Bukowski, America's most imitated and influential poet –– 143 never–before–seen works of gritty, amusing, and inspiring verse.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain

New PoemsBy Charles Bukowski

Ecco

Copyright © 2005 Charles Bukowski
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060577025

German

being the German kid in the 20's in Los Angeles
was difficult.
there was much anti-German feeling then,
a carry-over from World War I.
gangs of kids chased me through the neighborhood
yelling, "Hienie! Hienie! Hienie!"
they never caught me.
I was like a cat.
I knew all the paths through brush and alleys.
I scaled 6-foot back fences in a flash and was off through
backyards and around blocks
and onto garage roofs and other hiding places.
then too, they didn't really want to catch me.
they were afraid I might bayonet them
or gouge out their eyes.
this went on for about 18 months
then all of a sudden it seemed to stop.
I was more or less accepted (but never really)
which was all right with me.
those sons-of-bitches were Americans,
they and their parents had been born here.
they had names like Jones and Sullivan and
Baker.
they were pale and often fat with runny
noses and big belt buckles.
I decided never to become an American.
my hero was Baron Manfred von Richthofen
the German air ace;
he'd shot down 80 of their best
and there was nothing they could do about
that now.
their parents didn't like my parents
(I didn't either) and
I decided when I got big I'd go live in some place
like Iceland,
never open my door to anybody and live on my
luck, live with a beautiful wife and a bunch of wild
animals:
which is, more or less, what
happened.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountainby Charles Bukowski Copyright © 2005 by Charles Bukowski. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060577029
• ISBN 13: 9780060577025
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320