Fire Station: 55 Years Later the Quire Still Burns

Published in March 1970 by Capra Press, Fire Station holds a unique place in the bibliography of Charles Bukowski. Produced in both hardcover and softcover editions “by special arrangement with the Black Sparrow Press”, it can be considered the last of the early Bukowski chapbooks.

Fire Station’s roots are directly tied to The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills, the landmark collection of Bukowski poems published by John Martin and Black Sparrow Press in December 1969. Martin hired Sanford Dorbin to select the poems that appeared in The Days Run Away, all of which previously appeared in small press publications from the late 1950s through the late 1960s. With the help of Bukowski, Dorbin played the pivotal role of tracking down these magazines and collecting the poems for publication.

While The Days Run Away was being finalized, Martin realized the book was too long and needed to be cut for budget purposes. In his book, Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, author Abel Debritto describes how disagreements arose on what poems should be taken out:

“John Marin insisted on using poems that Dorbin disliked, such as What a Man I was, and he also chose to discard some of the longer pieces, including the classic Fire Station.”

Whether it was because of the quality of the poems themselves or the cost of publishing a lengthier book, Martin decided to reduce the number of pages. Debritto captured Dorbin’s version of events in King of the Underground:

“[Martin] did limit the book’s length,” Dorbin recalled. “He took out, or had me take out, a quire’s worth… That quire became the chapbook, Fire Station.”

While Martin would later attempt to block other small presses from publishing Bukowski chapbooks, he allowed Fire Station to be published primarily because of Capra’s publishers: Noel Young and Graham Mackintosh.

“Graham Mackintosh and Noel Young were the lifeblood of BSP,” Martin recently recalled. “Their hard work and diligence enabled BSP to produce and publish our books on schedule. While we were producing Bukowski's The Days Run Away it ran over the estimated length of ten signatures (160 pages) and it was necessary to cut it down to enable us to keep the $4.00 announced price. We managed that by cutting the poem Fire Station.”

“Those were the days of hot metal type and letterpress printing,” Martin continued. “Since the type for The Days Run Away was sitting there and was going to be melted down and reused for a future book, Noel asked if he could use that type to print and publish Fire Station. Of course I was happy to give him permission. He and Graham were good and valued friends.”

Prior to Fire Station, Noel Young began his career as a commercial printer. In 1969, he founded Capricorn Press in Santa Barbara and published a chapbook of poetry by his friend Gordon Grant. Over the next three decades the press would publish over 300 fiction and non-fiction publications, including works by Henry Miller, Anais Nin, and Raymond Carver.

Graham Mackintosh was the publisher of White Rabbit Press, which produced books by poets such as Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, as well as Richard Brautigan’s second collection, The Galilee Hitch-Hiker. Martin first met Mackintosh sometime in early 1966. At the time, Martin was still an office supply executive in Los Angeles and Mackintosh was a commercial printer in San Francisco. After meeting in San Francisco, both men agreed to produce what would become the 10^th work published by Black Sparrow: Ron Loewinsohn’s poetry collection, L’Autre.

By the time Fire Station was being produced, both Young and Mackintosh had already worked with Martin on several Black Sparrow works. As it pertains to Bukowski, in September 1967 Mackintosh designed and printed the chapbook, The Curtains are Waving and People Walk Through the Afternoon Here and in Berlin and in New York City and in Mexico. In April 1968, he also designed and printed At Terror Street and Agony Way, Black Sparrow’s first book of Bukowski poetry. Although the cover for the book was pedestrian compared to later Black Sparrow books, Mackintosh eloquently utilized blind stamping (or embossing) on some of the pages to reproduce a letter by Bukowski as well as several Bukowski drawings.

By the time Bukowski’s If We Take was published as a new year’s greeting in December 1969, Barbara Martin had taken over design duties for Black Sparrow.  Instead of Mackintosh, it was Young who was responsible for printing the chapbook, as well as two other Black Sparrow books published the very same month: A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski by Sanford Dorbin, and Black Sparrow’s second volume of Bukowski poetry, The Days Run Away.

There were two editions of Fire Station published by Capra: A softcover edition of 1,000 copies and a hardcover edition of 100 copies. The softcover version featured oversized, deckled covers made of stiff red paper. The hardcover version had black paper-covered boards with a red label pasted on the front and spine that appears to be made of the same stock used for the softcover version. Although both books are the same number of pages, the hardcover version feels much more substantial, like a true book rather than a chapbook. It also came with a delicate red paper tissue jacket that is quite scarce today.

Both covers feature an embossed gold vertical line that represents the fire pole featured in the poem. Inside, a smaller sheet of the red paper acts as a title page. When flipped, it reveals a drawing by Bukowski featuring a scene from the poem. An announcement for both editions was also published on the red paper stock.

The book is dedicated to Allen “Red” Strange, an acquaintance of Bukowski’s who lived a similar day-to-day existence and reportedly provided him with material for several short stories. The poem by the same name is dedicated "For Jane with love." Jane Cooney Baker was Charles Bukowski’s first female companion and perhaps the one true love of his life. They met in 1948 and were together on and off until 1955. She was ten years older than Bukowski and died of alcohol-related issues in 1962. Bukowski visited her in the hospital while she was dying and later paid for her funeral.

Baker’s death impacted Bukowski greatly and he wrote many powerful poems about her. Fire Station, on the other hand, is somewhat comical and most likely fictitious. It’s a long, narrative poem about the two of them wandering into a fire station drunk. Bukowski plays poker with the firemen while Jane visits the bunk room upstairs. Playing the role of her pimp, he makes money from both the poker game and Jane’s gymnastics in the bunk house.

Another poem of note in the book was A Little Atomic Bomb. The poem first appeared in Wormwood Review 24 (December 1966), which contained a special center section called “Night’s Work” featuring Bukowski drawings and poems. Five months later, it was published in 2 Poems (aka, 2 by Bukowski), the first non-broadside publication of Bukowski’s work by Black Sparrow. Since Black Sparrow had already published the poem, it makes sense Martin would cut it from The Days Run Away to save paper.

The full list of the poems in Fire Station includes:

• The Paper On The Floor (circa 1959)
• 2 Flies (circa 1963)
• Through The Streets Of Anywhere (circa 1964)
• Fire Station (circa 1967)
• An Argument Over Marshall Foch (circa 1961)
• 40 Cigarettes (circa 1965)
• A Killer Gets Ready (circa 1966)
• I Love You (circa 1966)
• A Little Atomic Bomb (circa 1966)

For a small press publication, Fire Station sold well enough to justify a second printing of the softcover edition. For Bukowski collectors, the easiest way to identify the second printing is a $2.00 price stamp on the rear cover.

Martin, Mackintosh and Young would go on to collaborate on many more Black Sparrow books, with Young focusing on printing and Mackintosh on typography and the covers. Both Mackintosh and Martin retired after Black Sparrow was sold in 2002.

During the 1980s, several small press publishers would attempt (sometimes with Bukowski’s permission) to publish chapbooks entirely devoted to Bukowski poems. Martin, however, was concerned with the production value of these efforts and did his best to stifle their distribution.

The one exception was Wormwood Review, whose editor Marvin Malone had published Bukowski several years before Martin. Beginning with Wormwood Review 16 in 1964, Malone would periodically publish special Bukowski center sections or entire issues devoted to his poems. Most of these issues had special numbered and signed limitations.

In this respect, Fire Station was an anomaly of some sorts, especially in regard to its production value. Other than the LouJon Press publications of the early 1960s, Capra was the only publisher whose standards approached those of Martin and Black Sparrow Press.

While publication of Fire Station ended with the second printing, the book’s poems live on. If you can’t obtain a copy of Fire Station, you’ll find the poems in Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979).