Hear 130 Minutes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Recorded Readings (1968)

Charles Bukowski smoking by Tyrenius

We enjoy the work of Charles Bukowski here at Open Culture, but recently we’ve weighted our attention toward his late work. And I mean his very late work, like the last poem he ever faxed. So today we turn to the very back of Bukowski’s back pages, for 130 minutes of the cantankerous yet oddly hope-filled poet and novelist’s first-ever recorded readings, all available at Ubuweb. They come, as the site says, “culled from tapes made by Bukowski at his Los Angeles home in 1968 for biographer and rock critic Barry Miles, long before the author had begun regular public readings.” Few would expect the behavior of a shrinking violet from the likes of Bukowski, but this occasion found him “so shy he insisted that he record alone. He reads both poetry and prose, gets thoroughly drunk during the recording, and bitches about his life, his landlord, and his neighbors.”