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 Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski) was a highly prolific American poet, novelist and short story writer.
He was born on 16 August 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to a German mother and American father with German roots. Both his parents were Roman Catholics.
In 1923, following the collapse of the German economy, the Bukowski family emigrated to the United States and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1930 the family moved to South Central Los Angeles and Bukowski attended Los Angeles High School.
In his autobiography Ham on Rye (1982) Bukowski claims his father was frequently abusive, both physically and mentally, beating his son for the smallest of offences. This led to his becoming a shy and socially withdrawn boy, and this was further exacerbated by a bad case of teen acne, his German accent and the clothing his parents made him wear.
In his early teens he was introduced to alcohol, and later wrote, “This [alcohol] is going to help me for a very long time,” describing his chronic alcoholism, or as he saw it, his way of coming to more amicable terms with his life.
He attended Los Angeles City College for two years where he took classes in art, journalism and literature, and later moved to New York to begin his career as a writer.
During his twenties Bukowski made an attempt to break into the literary world with his short story Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip, and two years later with the short story 20 Tanks from Kasseldown, but his failure led to disillusionment of the publication process and he quit writing for almost ten years.
He started writing poetry after he was hospitalised for a near-fatal bleeding ulcer in 1955.
In the early 1960s, traumatised by the death of Jane Cooney Baker, the object of his first real affection, Bukowski wrote a series of poems and stories lamenting her passing.
During his career he wrote six novels – including Post Office (1971), Women (1978) and Pulp (1994) – thousands of poems and hundreds of short stories.
Bukowski died on 9 March 1994 from leukaemia in San Pedro, California, aged 73.
The phrase “Don’t Try” is carved into his gravestone, referring to a phrase in one of his poems advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. He explains the phrase thusly in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington:
“Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: ‘What do you do? How do you write, create?’ You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That's very important: ‘not’ to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.” [edit]
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