The definitive collection from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing has left an enduring mark

Charles Bukowskiis one of Americas 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 the rest of his life. 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 scholar, works in the Digital Humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collectionsOn Writing,On Cats, andOn Love.