John Martin, the publisher of Black Sparrow Press, was a Bukowski enthusiast from the start. The Press’s first four publications were Bukowski broadsides, followed by two booklets, 2 Poems and The Curtains Are Waving…, in 1967, and then in 1968 the full-length book At Terror Street and Agony Way, which was accompanied by a tape recording of the author reading from the book.

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

Saturday night, June 24, 1967

dear Jon and Lou:

[* * *] got by scheme, 98 percent, but no pride there—only workhorse death. anyhow, now on my 4th beer, must fill out application on attempt at that grant tomorrow [* * *]

John Martin, BLACK SPARROW PRESS, just over [* * *] I don’t care for Loewinson, nor the poet he is going to do after me, Robert Kelly, they are from the excellent school of snobs, I mean they are snobs but they seem to write well, almost real, certain shots of their writing lifting me, but then again it’s all so well-worked and seemingly perfect that if you are not in too good a mood you get disgusted and throw the stuff in a corner. I guess that most of these boys are working centuries ahead, thinking how it might look in an English class, 2067 a.d., but they might get fooled—there might not be an English class then, or if there is those left might be able to sniff the strain of careful begging. I’m here now and the electric light is on over this typewriter and that’s all I know. if some whore uncrosses her legs and has an orgasm 100 years from now over my stuff my bones won’t light with neon. not where they are going to dump me anyhow. well, Mozart had a pauper’s grave but he had some strange and glowing creatures at the handles. well, that’s what counts: give me 4 good pall bearers carrying a cheesebox and let the president of U.S. Steel block traffic. [* * *]

[To William Want-ling]

July 31, 1967

[* * *] I’ll be 47 in August and maybe the same energy isn’t there:

Bukowski’s old, Bukowski’s old

he wears the bottoms of his beer-cans

rolled.

[* * *] some small press guy has been harassing me to write a novel. so in a moment of weakness, and after 4 or 5 beers, I shouted at him: ALL RIGHT, I’LL WRITE THE GOD DAMNED THING FOR YOU! I got the first 6 or 7 chapters done. title: The Way the Dead Love. then some prof who teaches at Loyola suggests I apply for a grant. I did. I turned the novel in and applied for a grant. I asked $6500 for a year’s time to write the thing. that got me off. I won’t get the grant but meanwhile I tell the small press guy that I am sitting around waiting for the grant and can’t do the novel because then I’d have nothing to use the grant on. [* * *]