Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail – Charles Bukowski’s First Book (1960)

Published by E.V. Griffith’s HEARSE Press on October 14, 1960, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail was Charles Bukowski’s first book. Although Bukowski would be exuberant when the book was finally released, it took 30 months from inception to when it was actually published. During that time Bukowski became distraught as promised deadlines came and went without notice from Griffith.  

The primarily reason for the delay was financial problems for Griffith, to the point where Bukowski even contributed to the production costs. Bukowski even took out advertisements for the book, only to be embarrassed when the publication dates were missed.

“I am going to wait a short period longer and if no results are achieved I am going to write [to] Trace, the San Francisco newspapers and the editors of other literary magazines of the whole history of this notorious and impossible chapbook nightmare,” Bukowski wrote Griffith. “I cannot see it that sloppy and amateur editorialism ... cruelty and ineptness go unchallenged.”

A short time later, the book would finally arrive. Bukowski would later describe his reaction when seeing the book for the first time.

“The package of books had arrived in the mail and I opened the package and here were the little chapbooks. They spilled on the sidewalk, all the little books and I knelt down among them, I was on my knees and I picked up a Flower Fist and I kissed it”.

A somewhat apologetic Bukowski would write Griffith:

 “I opened the package right in the street, sunlight coming down, and there it was: Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, never a baby born in more pain, but finally brought through by the good Doctor Griffith—a beautiful baby, beautiful! The first collected poems of a man of 40, who began writing late.”

This is one of only 200 copies produced, most of which have been lost to time. It is in Mint, like-new condition.

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