Over the course of his career, Charles Bukowski submitted his work to hundreds of different magazines and newspapers. While his most prolific submissions took place during the 1960s and 1970s, Bukowski kept submitting new poems to magazines long after he became well known – in fact, right up to his death.
For the most part, these magazines came and went almost overnight with few surviving more than a handful of issues. Even the Los Angeles Free Press, where Bukowski appeared in 191 issues, folded in just over a decade.
The exception to the norm was The Wormwood Review. Bukowski first appeared in issue #7 in 1962 and would continue to appear until the final issue in 1999 – five years after he died. In that time the magazine printed 410 Bukowski poems in 97 issues, some of which were special Bukowski issues. What’s more: Many of these poems remain unpublished in any books, including those by Black Sparrow Press. And many of the poems that did appear in Black Sparrow Press books were edited from the originals that appeared in Wormwood – and not for the better.
If any of this surprises you, you’re not alone. While longtime Bukowski fans and collectors are familiar with Wormwood Review, many others have probably seen copies on eBay and elsewhere but never felt the urge to pick up a copy. Part of that may be due to its subtle, spartan design which changed very little from its first issue in 1960 until the final issue in 1999. You might even say it looks “academic.” And you’d be right, because it was started by academics and continued to be published by an academic for nearly 40 years: Marvin Malone.
Which may seem odd since Bukowski loathed academics. Specifically, literary academics. But Malone wasn’t a literary academic, he was a pharmacologist with a PhD from the University of Nebraska. It’s said that he wrote 240 scientific papers during his career, but they had nothing to do with literature. And the closest he probably got to the counterculture movement was when Allen Ginsberg visited the University of Connecticut in 1970 and dedicated a poem to Malone because he mistakenly thought Malone was conducting LSD research there.
Outside the lab, Malone’s real passion was art and literature. In the late 1950s when Judson Crews was publishing Naked Ear and other poetry chapbooks in Taos, New Mexico, down the road Malone was publishing mimeo poetry booklets as a young professor at the University of New Mexico. In this regard, Malone was ahead of his time, predating the mimeo revolution that would lead to hundreds of poetry publications popping up in the 1960s. Those mimeo journals were some of the first to publish Bukowski’s work and were highly responsible for his early success.
Malone carried this passion for publishing with him when he transferred to the University of Connecticut in 1960. Already a collector of little magazines, he was pleasantly surprised to stumble across the second issue of Wormwood Review at a local drugstore in the small town of Storrs. Unlike his mimeo journals, this issue of Wormwood was commercially printed, mainly because of the effort involved in producing issue 1. In his 1991 essay “A Brief History of the Wormwood Review”, Malone described the strenuous effort that reportedly went into issue 1:
“The first issue of the Wormwood Review was printed in the fall of 1959 in Mt. Hope, Connecticut, and was edited by Alexander (Sandy) Taylor, James Scully, and Morton Felix. Taylor, who taught English at the nearby Storrs High School, owned an antique letterpress and had the connections to get quality paper wholesale. Scully and Felix were graduate students at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. The press was housed in a barn on Wormwood Hill. Its electric motor was defunct, so it had to be operated by spinning the flywheel by hand. To print, considerable physical effort was needed along with expert timing. The barn was drafty and the weather cold, so the editors/publishers/printers of the first issue had to be fueled with generous amounts of gin. The gin may explain the crooked placement of the text in many copies. Nevertheless, the first issue carried a number of name poets (Edwin Brock, John Holmes, Jean Garrigue, James Dickey, e. e. cummings, James Wright, Robert Sward, etc.), got good reviews, and pleased a good number of university accession librarians.”
Although the second issue took much less effort, the commercial printing job left the publishers $80 in debt. It’s unlikely that a third issue would have been published if Malone hadn’t stepped in at this point, teaming up with Taylor and Robert DeVoe (a high-school art teacher) to print issue 3. That issue was also commercially printed by offset, resulting in Wormwood’s debt increasing to $265.
That was enough for DeVoe to call it a day, but Taylor and Malone pushed on, manually printing issue 4 on old the Wormwood Hill letterpress.
Exhausted and in debt by the time issue 5 came around, Malone and Taylor found respite from a local minister who leant the two a small press used for paper-plate offset printing.
“While the physical appearance of the mag suffered, it then became possible to pay off the existing debt and current bills and become financially independent,” Malone would later recall.
During production for issue 5, other duties pulled Taylor away, leaving Malone the sole publisher, editor and art director of the magazine for the next 33 years.
Thank God for Alleys
Malone first came across Bukowski’s work a few years before when he met Judson Crews in Taos. Already a small magazine collector, Malone was excited when Crews gave him copies of Existaria #7 (1957) and Hearse #2 (1958), both of which contained Bukowski’s work.
Now that Wormwood was on more stable ground, Malone obtained Bukowski’s address and sent him copies of Wormwood 5 and 6 “without comment”. In return, Bukowski submitted some poems “without comment”. The result was Bukowski’s first appearance in issue 7 of Wormwood with his poem, “Thank God For Alleys”.
In addition to being Bukowski’s first appearance, the issue was notable for including Crews and Carl Larsen, editor of Existaria #7 and the person who had given Malone Bukowski’s address. It’s also notable for the cover art, which was produced under Malone’s art director pseudonym. “A. Sypher”. Perhaps not satisfied with the production quality, Malone inducted his young daughters into the publishing world by having them hand-color many of the issue’s covers (Malone did some as well). This not only added some vibrance to an otherwise drab black and white format, but also made each copy unique.
Bukowski would next appear in Wormwood 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 before his next notable appearance. Beginning with Carl Larsen in issue 11, Malone began featuring a center section devoted to a single poet. Bukowski’s turn came with Wormwood 16 (1964) with the self-titled section “Grip The Walls” featuring eight poems.
A mere eight issues later came Bukowski’s second center section in Wormwood 24 (1966). Bukowski named this section “night’s work (including buffalo bill)”. Not only did it feature seven poems, but it also included cover art by Bukowski and seven interior drawings. Malone also took this opportunity to publish “a beginner’s bibliography of bukowski". It listed Bukowski’s first published work, his first separately published work, and his 12 chapbooks and books published up to that point.
These center sections (and later entire special issues) were also significant because of signed limitations Malone created to go alone with them. As he would later recall:
“Starting with issue 15, a certain number of copies were signed by the special-section poet, with half being retained by the poet and the remainder distributed to patron subscribers, with surplus copies retained by the publisher. The number of copies thus signed has ranged from 5 (WR 15, William Wantling) to 75 (WR 110–111, Charles Bukowski). These signed copies have rapidly appreciated in value—e.g., copies of WR 16 (24 copies signed by Bukowski) have sold for $150 on the rare-book market. This has encouraged patron subscriptions to the point where a limit has been placed of no more than 26 patron subscribers at a given time. There is always a waiting list.”
Over the next three decades Malone would go on to publish several more special Bukowski issues:
- Wormwood 53 - 55 Beds in the Same Direction (Bukowski center section)
- Wormwood 71 -- Legs, Hips And Behind (special Bukowski issue)
- Wormwood 81/82 -- Good-By To Hollywood (Bukowski center section)
- Wormwood 95 -- Horses Don't Bet On People And Neither Do I (special Bukowski issue)
- Wormwood 100 -- Good Stuff (Bukowski center section)
- Wormwood Review 110-111 -- Beauti-Ful & Other Long Poems (special Bukowski issue)
- Wormwood 122/123 -- People Poems (special Bukowski issue)
Prior to Bukowski’s death in 1994, Malone was already at work on the next special Bukowski issue, something that would never come to pass. In a poem published in The Stylus 2 later that year, Malone said goodbye to Bukowski and mourned what could have been.
The Traditional SASE
Twenty days
before his death,
Bukowski sent
three long poems
accompanied by the
traditional stamped
self-addressed return
envelope.
Poems of life,
not of death.
All mint Bukowski,
all accepted.
In the acceptance
letter, another
Bukowski chapbook
was proposed
since eighty-seven
poems now
were in hand.
Since seventy copies
would have been signed,
the chapbook cannot
be, it appears, so
this editor will
space out the poems
three to four per issue
in the usual manner.
Since Wormwood: 133
is now being typed,
Bukowski will live on
through issue 158.
Maybe, at that time,
in the year 2000,
I’ll be able to
accept Bukowski’s
absence.
Sadly, that too would not come to be.
According to his daughter Christa Malone, “a series of family tragedies” started to impact Malone’s health. This culminated with the death of his eldest daughter Carla from breast cancer. Eight months later, on November 26, 1996, Marvin Malone died of a stroke while being treated for arrhythmia.
In 1997. Christa Malone, Marvin's younger daughter, co-edited issue 144 following Marvin's death. In 1999, she released issue 145/146 as a “Festschrift” to Marvin. As she did as a child with Issue 7 in 1962, she hand-colored the cover of each copy.
Tragically, in 2023 Christa also died of cancer.
It’s worth noting that during their 32-year relationship, Malone and Bukowski never met in person, something that Bukowski thought made their relationship more enduring and special. In a 1978 letter to Malone, Bukowski wrote:
"I have never had any magazine treat me like dear old Wormie… I'm lucky. And I'm lucky that Wormie has been around. I sometimes think of you. Then I think, it's lucky we have never met. It's lucky we have a professional distance. It's lucky you do what you do and I do what I do and we do it without politics and personal relationships. It's lucky, Malone, lucky, we have been a splendid pair. I salute your guts and your way."
Check out The Buk Shop's Wormwood Review section.
-----------------------------------------------
Wormwood 7 -- Bukowski’s First Appearance with B&W Cover with A. Sypher Signature
Wormwood 7 -- Bukowski’s First Appearance with B&W Cover with A. Sypher Signature
Wormwood 16 -- Grip The Walls (Bukowski center section)
Wormwood 24 -- night’s work (including buffalo bill) (Bukowski center section)
Wormwood 53 -- 55 Beds in the Same Direction (Bukowski center section)
71 -- Legs, Hips And Behind (special Bukowski issue)
Wormwood 81/82 -- Good-By To Hollywood (Bukowski center section)
Wormwood 95 -- Horses Don't Bet On People And Neither Do I (special Bukowski issue)
Wormwood 100 -- Good Stuff (Bukowski center section)
Wormwood Review 110-111 -- Beauti-Ful & Other Long Poems (special Bukowski issue)
Wormwood 122/123 -- People Poems (special Bukowski issue)
