The dogs bark at knives

Bukowski at his purest: lucid, grotesque and almost tender. In this collection of poems, he confronts old age, love, alcohol and loneliness with the irony that made him immortal. There are women, horse races, bars, bills to pay and the shadow of death haunting every verse. And above all, there is a dignity forged from contempt for hypocrisy and love for life's small miseries.

"Of the many stories that make up Bukowski's incredible biography, only ten percent are lies," as Manoel de Barros would say. And Bukowski did nothing to demystify any of them. On the contrary.

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994), born in Germany and raised in the United States, was one of the most controversial and influential writers of the 20th century. The son of a violent father and a precarious life, he turned failure into an aesthetic. With a raw and transparent language, he gave voice to the excluded, the drunks and the cynics. In Bukowski, obscenity is a form of lucidity: beauty happens when there is nothing left to lose.