Presently there are several dozen magazines and small presses that publish legions of Bukowski literary protégés and imitators. He remains a prolific and dominating literary force in underground literary circles and may well be the most imitated writer in the United States.
Bukowski's rise to international recognition was arduous. He was forty years old in 1960 when his first book of poetry, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, was published. This small book, only fourteen pages long, came fourteen years after his first magazine appearance. Bukowski spent the interim years living at the bottom of American society as a common laborer, skid-row alcoholic, social outcast, misfit, and recluse. In the mid 1950s, after a decade of heavy drinking, he was hospitalized with a severe bleeding ulcer. After his remarkable recovery he resumed his writing. His poetry initially brought him a small but loyal audience. In the early 1960s he published several chapbooks in quick succession, among them Longshot Pomes [sic] for Broke Players and Run with the Hunted (both 1962). However, his work in the short-story genre first delivered a wide readership and solidified his literary reputation.
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