Charles Bukowski is recognized as an international literary figure. His first poem, "Hello!," celebrating the black driver of a horse-drawn trash wagon, was published in a mimeograph magazine called Matrix in 1946, when Bukowski was twenty-six years old. He published little poetry or prose in the l940s and did not publish with any frequency until after he turned thirty-five. When he began to write and publish in the late 1950s,it was with a vengeance and a fury. From 1960, when he published his first book of poetry, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, until 1994, when he died of leukemia, his name appeared frequently in little literary magazines and newspapers around the world. In his long career he published more than sixty books of poetry and prose, including both short-story collections and novels. Many of these books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Bukowski also wrote and published a screenplay, Barfly (1987), which became a major motion picture starring Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke.
