An amazing first-hand personal insight to the life and tribulations of one of the great 20th century American poets. Begins with a 22-line spontaneous prose poem: “when the bomb arrives, I will arrive.—physical pain is the laughter of a dirty joke. POPPYSEED BREAD IS A DELUSION. who opened the window? …fools are usually glad they are.—An intelligence that is proud is not wisdom…to sleep til noon, to weep at night; to gamble everything on monsoons and secretaries…Give me a piece of the action when they stiff the crowd; when Moses got the message he only heard the part in front…When I cry I know that I have escaped sadness. Grace is not in doing a thing well but only in taking a small pleasure where a large pleasure is seemingly offered. WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE SHUT THE GOD DAMNED WINDOW? Dear Willie: Dear #### sire: my cock average size but mostly out of action lately, desire there still, but price too high, trouble too much, there, or at a motel outside Del Mar track in August it is there, and then it is gone, the color of the dress I remember, some words spoken, but the act is really secondary, they have hung the cock on me, I have dipped, but really, the walls are large. Born Andernach, Germany August 16th., 1920. German mother, father with American Army (Pasadena born but of German parentage) of Occupation. There is some evidence that I was born, or at least conceived out of wedlock, but I am not sure…All grotesques true. Between the imbecile savagery of my father, the disinterestness (sic) of my mother, and the sweet hatred of my playmates: ‘Hienie! Hienie! Hienie!’ things were pretty hot all around. They got hotter when I was in my 13th. year on, I broke out not with acne, but with these HUGE boils, in my eyes, neck, back, face, and I’d ride the streetcar to the hospital, the charity ward, the old man was not working, and there they’d drill me with the electric needle, which is kind of a wood drill that they stick into people…Went to L.A….I went to work in the railroad yards…I drank and gambled at night…with the aircraft workers and pimps and ect. My place got to be known…it was packed…Onenight I hit big…2 or 3 hundred. I know they’d be back. Got in a fight, broke a mirror and a couple of chairs but held onto the money and early in the morning caught a bus for New Orleans…Roomed across from THE GANGPLANK CAFÉ and began writing. Short stories. Drank the money up, went to work in a comic book house, and soon moved on Miami beach. Atlanta. New York. St. Louis. Philly. Frisco. L.A. again. New Orleans again…Around and around…Chicago. I stopped writing. I concentrated on drinking…I would get up early in the morning and go to a bar there and I would close that bar at night…Ended up in same charity hospital. This time not with boils but with my stomach torn open finally with rot gut and agony. 8 pints of blood and 7 pints of glucouse (sic) transfused in without a stop. My whore came to see me and she was drunk. My oldman was with her. The old man gave me a lot of lip and the whore was nasty too, and I told the old man, ‘Just one more word out of you and I’m going to yank this needle outa my arm, climb off this deathbed and whip your ass!’ They left. I came out of there, white and old, in love with sunlight, told never to drink again or death would be mine…Anyhow, I got on a mail truck and drove it around and delivered letters and drank…and then one night I sat down and began writing poetry. What a hell of a thing. Where to send this stuff. Well, I took a shot. There was a magazine called HARLEQUIN and I was a fucking clown and it was out in some small town in Texas and maybe they wouldn’t know bad stuff when they saw it, so--. There was a gal editor there, and the poor dear went wild. Special edition. Letters followed. The letters got warm. The letters got hot. Next thing I knew the gal editor was in Los Angeles. Next thing I knew we were in Las Vegas for marriage…We went back to L.A. and I went back to work, somewhere. The marriage didn’t work. It took 3 years for her to find out that I was not what she had thought I was supposed to be. I was anti-social, coarse, a drunkard, didn’t go to church, played horses, cursed when intoxicated, didn’t like to go anywhere, shaved carelessly, didn’t care for her paintings or her relatives, sometimes stayed in bed 2 or 3 days running ect. ect…I went back to my whore who had once been such a cruel and beautiful woman, and who was no longer beautiful (as such) but who had, magically, become a warm and real person, but she could not stop drinking, she drank more than I, and she died….I hope this clears up some things and that I have not Ferlinghettied you. I can tell you things that happened like this and it takes nothing away because it is only a LISTING in a sense, and what happened, the living of it, it is still there. I have played some bad lutestrings and taken some knocks in the head, but it was the only way, there was only one path…I liked the EARLY Hemingway, and like the rest of us, was affected somewhat by T.S. [Eliot] and Auden, but not so much in a sense of content but in clean and easy way of saying. I like Wagner and Beethoven, Klee and Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and rabbits…”. Mentions many more names, including Verdi, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Bach, von Dohnanyi, Gluck, Mahler, Bruckner, Handel, Brahms, etc. “In Jeffers, I like the longer works…where everything is hard brick and breaking, where everything is up against the knife and very real…He writes believably and the pages are in your hands like warm things…the poem you asked about where the guy sets fire to the shack, I do not have a copy of it here, mailed it to Jon, but it was in a copy of MIDWEST, believe it had a yellow cover…Meanwhile, got yr Comminque (?) latest, and good stuff. Your writing is beginning to sound more like your better letters, which means you are getting closer to center…It is good to see growth in a real man. The pricks have always been lucky. Now if they only don’t feature you in some mag with photos and excerpts from letters ect., so you won’t get the fathead and flatten out and die, you and I are going to get along…I told Jon [Webb] to let you have your head in the intro…But you must know that I am honored to have you for my barker…and Bukowski steps out from behind the tent flap with 3 red hairs on his chest, and can of beer in one hand a German shepard pup in the other. Keep your bones in good motion, kid…I think it is not so much important to build a literary thing as it is not to hurt things…dip the brush in turpentine, Buk (signed in blue ink). ps. I asked Webb not to send proofs of the section…think of other days & bad days to come…but the walls will be coming down. c.b.” And 3 lines hand-written in blue ink by Bukowski “p.s.s. – you are still dating your letters ’62, with the day before the month, thus 3-1-62 should read 1-3-63. Are you drinking, old man? Buk.” From the Edwin Blair Collection of Beat Literature. Includes an autograph note from Edwin Blair, which he writes: “Bukowski gives Corrington a short history of his life so that Corrington can write intro for It Catches My Heart in Its Hands. I never thought I’d give this up as I’ve had it for 40 years, but for Lou I will. I think its #1 of the Bukowski letters I’ve seen. Ed.” This letter was later published in Screams From the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (Black Sparrow Press, 1993), but portions were left out, including much towards the end of the letter.