Literary Collections

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 Andernach, Germany to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994 at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994). During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). His most recent books are the posthumous collections What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), and Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001). All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Black Sparrow will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters. SHERI MARTINELLI (1918-1996) was an artist, writer, model, and magazine editor. She studied ceramics at the Philadelphia School of Arts, engraving at Atelier 17, and literature with Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Federal Hospital for the Insane. Reproductions of some of her paintings were published in La Martinelli (1956), with an introduction by Pound. She edited the Anagogic & Paideumic Review (1959-70) and privately published numerous booklets of prose, poetry, and drawings. STEVEN MOORE is the author/editor of five previous books—three on William Gaddis, one on Ronald Firbank, and an anthology of vampire poetry—and has contributed numerous essays on modern literature to a variety of more...

Price: $13.95

The swank apartment, the killer job, and the perfect boyfriend/girlfriend haven't yet fallen into place. Is this really adulthood? Welcome to life before the mortgage. Here's what you need to know. Christina Amini and Rachel Hutton have brought together the very best writing on this unpredictable -- and often hilarious -- time. This book features essays by celebrated writers such as Joel Stein, Thisbe Nissen, Thomas Beller, Found magazine's Davy Rothbart, and ReadyMade's Shoshana Berger, as well as exciting new writers. more...

Price: $11.99

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving European manuscript dating to circa 1010. At 3183 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland (modern southern Sweden) and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retainers. [Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf under the terms of the GNU-FDL] more...

Price: $4.99

Like the day Elvis died or O.J. was acquitted, the Tuesday you wake up paralyzed is not a day you soon forget. For writer Allen Rucker—baby boomer, husband, father of two, aging Hollywood also-ran—life started over that Tuesday when, at the age of fifty-one, he was struck by a rare disorder—transverse myelitis—that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Why him? Was he being punished? Was it his stressful life? His frustrating career? Telling too many Christopher Reeve jokes? Dazed and paralyzed, he was forced to reevaluate everything, from the simplest bodily functions to the mysteries of the universe. In a style that is at once funny and moving, The Best Seat in the House offers an unpretentious and unapologetic account of learning to live with paralysis. Without trivializing his situation, and without sermons or clichés, Rucker invites all readers, whether disabled or not, to identify with him for better or for worse. This remarkably comic and heartfelt book speaks to the fragility of life and to the resilience and adaptability of a single, ordinary human being. Lucky for us, this human being has a sense of humor. At first, it may not look like the best seat in the house, but read on. You might be surprised. more...

Price: $19.95

Includes the full German text, accompanied by German-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context. more...

Price: $34.95