"CHRIST SHOULD HAVE LAUGHED ON THE CROSS,/IT WOULD HAVE PETRIFIED HIS KILLERS/NOW THERE ARE MORE KILLERS THAN EVER/AND I WRITE POEMS FOR THEM."

BUKOWSKI, Charles. Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974. Octavo, original half blue cloth, original acetate. $2200.

Signed limited first edition, number 267 of only 300 copies signed by Bukowski.

"Charles Bukowski was a bard of the barroom and the brothel, a direct descendant of the Romantic visionaries who worshiped at the altar of personal excess, violence and madness… Bukowski's skeletal, self-referential poems and stories, barren of metaphor but crackling with hard truth told in American barroom vernacular, brought him adulation… [that] came late… Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, his first poetry collection, was published in 1959, and over the years at least 40 more books followed, all of them rooted in the experiences of a loner and outcast with a keen eye for the absurd" (New York Times). The first three sections of this collection comprise poems previously published in It Catches My Heart in its Hands (1963), Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965), and At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968); the final section is of new works written in 1972 and 1973. Also issued in a trade edition and signed limited edition of 50 copies with an original drawing by Bukowski. Krumhansl 46c.

Very slight sunning to rear board. A nearly fine copy in chipped acetate.