This month marks the 65th anniversary of Charles Bukowski’s first seperate publication, His Wife the Painter. While most collectors associate the broadside with E.V. Griffith’s portfolio Coffin 1, the poem was issued five years earlier as a stand-alone piece.
The 11” x 5” broadside was printed as HEARSE BROADSIDE NO. 1 by Griffith’s Hearse Press and dated 6/16/60. By that time, it had been over two years since Griffith had agreed to publish Bukowski’s first book, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail. And while Griffith had included Bukowski in two issues of his magazine Hearse during those two years, Bukowski was becoming increasingly angry distraught over the length of time it was taking Griffith to finish the project.
Between 1959 and August 1960, Bukowski wrote Griffith regularly asking about the status of the book, but Griffith was slow to respond or didn’t respond at all. “Are you still alive?” began one letter from Bukowski in December 1959.
Griffith indicated there were two issues behind the delay of the book. The first was financial. Griffith was involved in too many projects and it was depleting his resources. Bukowski accepted this and agreed to pay half the cost of producing the book.
The second issue was that Griffith was adamant that all the poems in the book needed to be previously published. This was frustrating to Bukowski because at this point his poetry was just beginning to be published. While the Mimeo Revolution would later be responsible for creating hundreds of new poetry publications, during this period Bukowski had to rely on a small number of established poetry magazines like Epos to publish his work.
In truth, Griffith’s insistence on this requirment greatly increased the legitimacy of the book. Since Bukowski was partly paying for the book, it could be perceived as simply an excercise in self publishing.
Bukowski pushed on, sending Griffith new poems as soon as they were published. But when Griffith did not respond to these submissions, it only caused increased torment for Bukowski. Were the new poems no good?
While Bukowski was already accustomed to the unprofessional ways of small magazine editors, it began to reach a breaking point. Further infuriating Bukowski was that despite partly paying for the book, Griffith continued to put out Hearse magazine and chapbooks for other writers, including Judson Crews. Was Griffith using Bukowski’s money to finance these projects?
On August 1, 1960, Bukowski wrote Griffith.
“Again the long silence from Eureka, although I see in Trace 38 you are coming out with more Mason Jordan Mason as fast as Crews can write it, also a couple of more editors. Well, that’s all right. What you do is yours. I hate to bitch, but is anything happening with Flower and the Fist etc. I have told a couple of more magazines, and few people and am beginning to feel foolish because as you know, this is the second time around with the same act. Let me hear something or other. Stamp self-addressed enclosed.
Marvin Bell and a couple of others seem to think my poem “Death of a Roach” in Epos, Winter 1959, is a pretty good poem? Too late to work it in? More loot? You don’t care for the poem? Anyway, I’ll be glad when it’s all over. The thing has become more than a few pages of my poems. It has been going on so long that it has become like a disease, an obsession, purgatory, Alcatraz… how long has it been? 2 years? 3? Please, E.V., be reasonable. Let’s get this thing out of the way. Let Mason screw his lambs for a while. I am beginning to talk to myself in the mirror.”
While it’s unclear whether Bukowski was aware of it at the time, Griffith had another project in the works that involved Bukowski. He’d conceived of a portfolio of broadsides from different writers, made up of different paper stocks, sizes and colors. To go along with the death theme of Hearse Press, the portfolio was to be named, Coffin 1.
While Coffin 1 was likely in its infancy stage at the time, in an effort to appease Bukowski, Griffith produced what would be one of four Bukowski broadsides that would later appear in the portfolio: His Wife the Painter. According to Abel Debritto’s A Catalog of Ordinary Madness, a total of 201 copies were produced: 50 for distribution, 150 for inclusion in Coffin 1, and one “used for the offset pasteup of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail.”
Although the broadside is dated 6/16/60, Bukowski received copies of the broadside poem less than a week after writing Griffith. In a letter to Griffith dated August 6, 1960, Bukowski wrote:
“Thank you for the quick response on inquiry. Hope I have not piqued you.
Yes, this little mag game discouraging and that is why I try to keep quiet and not scratch the editors, just write the poem. When I bitch occasionally it’s just the nerves reaching the throat, mine really, and I’m eating at myself rather than anyone else.
Thank you for the broadsides: they are beautiful type jobs. I have at least a half dozen friends, places in mind that I’d like to see these. Tonight, I am mailing out the ones you send. They are wonderfully presented, can’t quite get over that. Do you have a few more sets?
…Nice to hear from you Griff and I promise not to cry anymore.”
While it would be another grueling couple of months before Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail would be published in October 1960, Griffith’s gesture seemed to please Bukowski. But only for a short time. There would be more angry letters from Bukowski in the coming weeks before Bukowski first laid eyes on the book on October 13, 1960. After which, he wrote Griffith a heart-felt letter of appreciation. The two men would continue to work with one another over the next two decades with Bukowski continuing to appear in Hearse magazine and later in Griffith's next publication Poetry Now.
Additional Notes:
- At the same time Griffith printed His Wife the Painter, he also printed a second broadside booklet that would appear in Coffin 1: The Paper on the Floor. According to Debritto’s A Catalog of Ordinary Madness, “150 copies were used in the portfolio and the remaining copy was used in the offset pasteup of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail.”
- The two addition broadsides included in Coffin 1 were The Old Man on the Corner and Waste Basket. Neither of these poems would appear in Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail.
- A smaller facsimile of His Wife the Painter was tipped into Sanford Dorbin’s A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski (Black Sparrow Press, 1969).
- Hearse magazine went on hiatus for several years until Griffith came across a Bukowski poem submitted years before, which inspired him to start publishing Hearse again. That poem was the legendary The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills.
