Bukowski, Charles; Purdy, Al

The Bukowski/ Purdy Letters 1964-1974

ISBN: 0920348254
Santa Barbara, CA: The Paget Press, 1983. First Softcover Edition. “Near 20 years later and Cruise missiles about to land in the laundry bag. And I think I was a pretty callow 45-year-old back then, with too much ego and too little talent. So what does that make me now? Not much different, I think, except much older. Most of the opinions expressed back then I’m stuck with: I still think Bukowski is rather marvelous, and Jeffers the only other U.S. poet I have much use for. Sure, there are a few who wrote a few poems (Dickey, Cummings, Bishop etc.), and one cant ignore Dickinson. But I think of her as a sport, something thrown up on the beach of time by isolation and neurosis. Still, some of her stuff can nail you to the wall. And the great-god-Whitman makes me sick to my stomach with the good fellowship of the road, an earlier and simple-minded Kerouac. What he did do, and praise him for it, was teach a better poet, D.H. Lawrence, how to harness his own scattergun abilities. In 1983 the world is lousy with poets few people ever heard of; an extraordinary number of them just below the top level. And that's the way it was back in 1964 as well. An old man, Ramon Guthrie, who died fairly recently, impressed me a great deal. But whatever the top level is, he didnt reach it either. I mean the Yeats level, even the Dylan Thomas and Lawrence levels. Which is sad, but there is still beer. I am, of course, writing this because the publisher wants me to. I cant think of any other reason. This Buk-Purdy thing was a private correspondence, which neither of us expected to see in public, gossiping away like a dumb loudspeaker. I do confess it makes me a little morose, the way I dont feel when I have lost myself in poems. I hope nobody likes me for it, but someone might be slightly interested.”--Al Purdy, “Foreword.” Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), the great American author described by some as “the poet laureate of American Lowlife,” is widely considered not only one of the finest poets America has ever produced, but also as a complex figure with a rich personal life. It was known that, while the poet was largely reclusive, melancholic, and in some cases even deemed quite the bastard, Buk maintained extensive correspondences with his rouge-poet-vagabond friends. One such literary vagabond was Canadian free-verse poet, Alfred Wellington Purdy (1918-2000). Offered today is the 1983 collection of correspondences between the two poets, The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1964-1974. This collection is a deeply intimate look into the minds of the two poets, as well as a look into the nature of their friendship and the developments of their lives over the course of a decade. At points hilarious, erudite, melancholic, and almost certainly fueled by wine and bourbon, this collection operates as an important snap-shot in literary history, capturing raw emotion and literary ideas as the poets thought them up. (Debritto, A85, pg. 46) Softcover. First softcover edition, as deduced from colophon, first printing though not explicated as such at copyright page. Book is in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges, and light smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #7102]

Price: $200.00