Mockingbird Wish Me Luck
Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author
“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck captures glimpses of Charles Bukowski's view on life through his poignant poetry: the pain, the hate, the love, and the beauty. He writes of lechery and pain while finding still being able to find its beauty.
This is the gutter and the stars, seen through the bottom of a glass.
- Gritty Realism: From skid row bars to racetrack losses and fistfights in cheap rooms, Bukowski documents the lives of the forgotten with unflinching honesty.
- The Los Angeles Laureate: Dubbed "the Walt Whitman of Los Angeles," he captures the city’s sun-bleached despair and fleeting moments of grace like no one else.
- A Singular Voice: Direct, conversational, and stripped of pretense, these poems brought everybody "down to earth, even the angels," influencing a generation of writers.
- Beauty in the Ugly: A clear-eyed look at the human condition that explores the depths of lechery and pain while finding moments of unexpected tenderness.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.
Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.
More by Charles Bukowski
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →