"The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles."—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author

"He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels."—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

The Pleasures of the Damned features selected later poetry of Charles Bukowski, America's most influential and imitated American poet.

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—a counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature, a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he struck a chord with generations of readers with his raw and honest poetry about booze, work, and women, that spoke to his fans as "real" and, like the work of the Beats, even dangerous.

The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works of Bukowski's later years, edited by John Martin of Black Sparrow Press, including the last of his new, never-before-published poems.

This essential collection captures the voice of a Los Angeles literary legend: