Only a very few human beings can write poetry well, write it as only the champs know how. With the passing of Charles Bukowski, as readers, we must look for the other wayward children of the Apocalypse. You won't find them in the mainstream publishing venues. It just ain't gonna happen. They've always played it safe and they always will. The small presses are the last vanguard of truth in a world gone mad. Off The Tongues Of Sinners is a key example that there is life remaining in the slim world of poetics. You get Neeli Cherkovski (Bukowski biographer), Bradley Mason Hamlin (creator of the metaphysical crime series: Alcoholman), Gerlad Nicosia (Jack Kerouac biographer), and A.D. Winans (Second Coming publisher). A good team, a good mix, well worth the price of admission.

WOW! A TRULY EPIC COLLECTION OF POEMS BY SOME GREAT WRITERS.
NEELI CHERKOVSKI, ONE OF BUKOWSKI'S BEST FRIENDS. AUTHOR OF BUKOWSKI AND FERLINGHETTI BIOGRAPHIES. NEELI TURNS OUT A HANDFUL OF STUNNING POEMS. A.D. WINANS, PUBLISHER OF 2ND COMING, A SAN FRANCISCO BORN AND BRED WRITER, SMALL PRESS HERO AND CHAMPION OF THE UNDERDOG. GERALD NICOSIA, AUTHOR OF MEMORY BABE THE DEFINITIVE KEROUAC BIOGRAPHY. ALSO A SECTION FROM BRADLEY MASON HAMLIN, NEW CUTTING EDGE MISFIT LIT. A GREAT BOOK LOADED WITH EXCELLENT POETRY FROM OF AMERICA'S BEST SMALL PRESS LEGENDS.

This is an outstanding book, one that offers keen insight into several of our most unjustly overlooked great authors.

Other fine books by Neeli Cherkovski are: Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Bukowski: A Life.

neeli cherkovski's only fine work. I recommend it highly.no lie. best and funniest descriptions of some of our most rebellious authors,

This deeply heartfelt work, a succinct and thankfully neo unself-righteous lamentation by Neeli Cherkovski to and for his for late north beach, san francisco, comrade-in-poesy bob "Abommunist Manifesto" kaufman.This is Cherkovski's finest creative effort, at least among those of Cherk's works this reviewer has studied. Cherkovski, biographer of giants Ferlinghetti, Winans, and Bukowski, this time sets aside the journalistic and laborious near drudgeries of biographer toil, instead transcending the literary common-place to break bread with the gods, specifically those gods who specialize in living poetry's highest calling. I mean this time out Cherkovski is Inspired! Nothing obtuse about this new work; nothing hacklike; nothing testy nor negative nor put down-y.Kaufman was really a close friend and is so sorely missed by Cherkovski a reader will have a tough time keeping eyes dry. One must wonder about the amount of affection he felt for his former roommate, charles bukowski, in comparison to the genuine love, admiration, deep abiding respect both creatively and as a simple pal for a pal, and now sorrow for his departed walk-mate an laugh partner, for so many fun filled moments of joy, laughs, hilarious revelries and ribald north beach shared experiences...Buy this great book for your library, for those shelves you maintain the very best of cogent spiritual works packed with holy sacred precious elegaic renderings of our master surviving poet/scribes - if this one doesn't grab at least a Nobel nomination for poetry - I'll astro- project to stockholm myself to beat on their ignorant and yes illiterate doors! Cherkovski has dominated Bay area literary activity for twenty years, mentoring his near peers gregory corso, michael McClure, and especially star student harold "hotel nirvana" norse, to new heights of literary success - without Cherkovski's calm and enlightened hand, such writers would have struggled so much more to bring lucid cohesion to their new stanzas.This elegy will last if we last; a work to bring walls of bigotry down as long as hate sticks around - FOR AS LONG AS THERE REMAINS ONE GOOD EAR ON EARTH THIS ELEGY WILL BE HEARD AND LIVE FOREVER. Amen

I'm relatively new to reading modern American poets, and I've never liked Allen Ginsberg's work. So I figured the whole genre wasn't for me (after all, there's lots to read out there...)But I have read Whitman, and Cherkoski was able to help me make the connections between the poets he highlights and the American poetic tradition I've always adored.

I'd never pick up a book like this on my own...but I skimmed through part of this book at the library one day...and the prose hooked me. I loved it. Clear and clean--the best nonfiction prose has to offer. And usually I can't stand the "I was there and knew all these famous people and we were, like, so totally wild" war stories--but Cherkovski doesn't indulge in that much, and when he does, it's amusing rather than cloying.

I'm grateful that this book caught my eye: the book sampled several poets I can't wait to read more of like John Wieners, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Michael McClure. It is a good nonfiction book that makes you want to read more....

I am so pleased to see that this excellent book is being reissued. Neeli Cherkovski has an intimate knowledge of the poets he profiles and writes in relaxed, crystal clear prose.

Read this one and "Bukowski: A Life," then start on Cherkovski's poetry. You won't be disappointed. I particularly recommend "Elegy for Bob Kaufman."

I am a huge Bukowski fan but this book seemed to list stories and events in a very akward manner. It had great detail and I learned alot about Buk but if given the chance I would have rather have read 15 essays on Charles Bukowski then have to read this book again.

Neeli Cherkovski is especially well situated to write the biography of his longtime friend and literary compadre, Charles Bukowski. Cherkovski has a true poet's eye and heart and understand that poets function on feeling--succeeding in their poetry by the amount of feeling they can capture, and managing to survive the slings and arrows of everyday life by submerging much of that feeling behind various kinds of soul armor. Perhaps because Bukowski first met Cherkovski as a teenager, he opened himself to his later biographer as he did to few others in his life--let Cherkovski glimpse the real pains and frustrations and desperate need for love that drove him to become the wild man and roughneck of contemporary American poetry. This book has an exceptional insight into Bukowski's creative process--into the black humor, relentless work ethic, indomitable drive for survival, gutsiness, and at times just plain craziness that Bukowski was able to meld into as distinctive a poetic sound as any we've heard in the last century's prosody. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand what separates real poets from pretenders, and real poetry from the supremely irrelevant verse that clogs up most academic curriculums as the official canon. Above all, in the agonies and ecstasies of Bukowski's life, it shows the price real poets have to pay to do their work.

I suppose I deserve this. I bought this book at the behest of a Barnes and Noble employee. She said it was the best Bukowski biography she's read. Well, I found the book less than agreeable and I am now suffering through a severe case of buyer's remorse. Corporate literati ...strike again.

Since I already have Ham On Rye, Post Office, South Of No North, and numerous volumes of Bukowski poetry, this biography really is obsolete. It seems like Cherkovski pasted together snippets of the Bukowski collection, and added some of his own limited insights, placed the whole conglomeration between a cover and shipped it off to market.

Anyone who has read even a limited amount of Bukowski's work will find nothing new in this biography. Save your money and purchase Buk's poetry. I recommend Bone Palace Ballet, or The Night Torn Made With Footsteps.

Frankly, not having known or been discussed in this book, I liked it. I wasn't alive (for much of his lifetime) and really, seeing a little more about him (in novel fashion) proved to be fascinating.

Bukowski was an American writer. He is shown in this book with his scars, dirty clothes, and kinda lewd persona. He's real from the beginning whereas it took an awful lot of alcohol, etc. until Hemingway was near as (like those of us mortals....)

This might not be a critically perfect biography. It might have needed more research, etc. BUT.... speaking form the perspective of an educated general fan, it is worthwhile, though I don't kow if I'd buy it-- the other biography is probably more of a keeper.... This is a good story, though.....

Buy the poetry more than any bio. though!!!

Frankly, it doesn't much matter whether Bukowski liked this biography or if he hated it. As a longtime Bukowski reader, though, I must say that I found this to be a well-crafted and informative read.

While it is true that a good bit of the material here will be very familiar to anyone who has read a fair amount of Bukowski's work, Cherkovski does a good job of infusing this material with interpretation and previously unreported anecdotes.

I'm looking forward to reading Howard Soune's Buk bio -- I hear it's great; but folks, this book is very fine, too.

As Bukowski scholarship grows and more biographies are written, as they are sure to be, I predict that this one will continue to more than hold its own.