Kauri No. 11 -- One Uncollected Poem by Charles Bukowski Poem (1965)

Published in 1965, Kauri No. 11 (November/December) featured perhaps the longest title for a poem in American Literary History:

I Am Afraid That I Will Continue To Drink Myself To Death For These Small Reasons Mentioned Here And For Other Reasons That Neither Of Us Has Time For Because I Have The Need To Get Drunk Now

The poem has yet to be published again.

Kauri was published by Will Inman, a true 1960s rebel who was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 where he was accused of being the head of the Communist Party in North Carolina. Inman pleaded the fifth in response to all questions.

From 1964 to 1977, Inman edited and published the seminal poetry newsletter Kauri, part of the Mimeo Revolution of the 1960s, where he published the work of Charles Bukowski, Clarence Major, Walter Lowenfels, William Packard, Ron Silliman, and John Sinclair. The title, Kauri, is the Hindi word for the seashell known to English speaking peoples as a cowrie shell. In 1967 he was appointed Poet-in-Residence at American University.

Inman didn’t particularly care for Bukowski’s poetry, but he felt his poems balanced out the various poetry schools of poets who appeared in Kauri. If nothing else, Bukowski (who contributed to eight issues of Kauri) was certainly entertaining with various letters and raw poems that appeared in Kauri.

Please Note: Surviving issues of Kauri are all fragile, some more than others.

This copy is Near Fall Apart ++ condition. This is an issue that was mailed, and those surviving issues tend to whistle past the graveyard. The paper is slowly disintegrating, the last page has separated from the spine and the rest are about to jump ship, there are more chips than a pack of Ruffles, and the only people who would desire this copy are true Bukowski subnormals (like myself).

Box 18