Category: 4 Poets

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Charles Bukowski’s Lost Essay in 4 Poets | A Notebook Discovery

One of the more unusual things the synaesthesia press ever published was an essay by Charles Bukowski on the state of American poetry.

The piece appeared in 4 Poets, synaesthesia press chapbook #2, and has long since gone out of print.

Bukowski wrote the essay in 1964. I discovered it while working in the Special Collections Department at the University of Arizona. The manuscript was preserved in one of those inexpensive spiral-bound notebooks. It cost all of thirty-nine cents and looked like it had lived a hard life. There were beer stains, doodles, random observations, abandoned ideas, personal notes, and the sort of material most writers never expect anyone else to read. To hold it in my hands was a thrill. For a young publisher and devoted Bukowski reader, it felt like I was given a backstage pass.

Then, right in the middle of it all, was this wonderful essay.

The notebook turned out to be a treasure trove. It also contained the handwritten first draft of The Day It Snowed in L.A., which would not appear in print until more than twenty years later and survived almost unchanged from the version preserved in the notebook. The cover illustration I eventually used for 4 Poets was found there as well. Another essay, “The House of Horrors,” also emerged from those same pages and was included in a small number of special copies.

I can’t adequately describe what it felt like to hold that notebook in my hands. At the time, it was one of the great thrills of my young publishing life. Looking back, I realize it was one of those experiences that can only happen once. For a few hours, I wasn’t reading Bukowski anymore. I was sitting beside him while he worked.

4 Poets was published in an edition of 243 copies, along with 11 special copies containing the additional Bukowski essay “The House of Horrors.” Those special copies were issued in 11 different variant covers, each representing a cover design I had considered for the regular edition. Both editions sold quickly. Every so often a copy surfaces on the secondary market, usually to my surprise. I haven’t had one to sell in years.

What remains is the memory of that notebook and the privilege of bringing a small piece of it into print.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti and 4 Poets | How ‘Poet as Fisherman’ Joined the Project

Front and back covers of synaesthesia press chapbook 4 Poets featuring a whimsical line drawing adapted from a Charles Bukowski notebook discovered in the University of Arizona Special Collections collection.

I met Lawrence Ferlinghetti at a reading at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth, Texas, sometime around 1992. I was living in Dallas at the time, hustling as a penny-stock broker. Poetry and penny stocks made for an odd combination, but there I was. Looking back, my life has always seemed to work that way.

After his reading, Ferlinghetti stayed to sign books and answer questions. When my turn came, I asked if he might have a poem available for a small publishing project Steve Fisher and I were assembling. Without hesitation, he opened the folder he was carrying, pulled out a poem, and handed it to me.

Just like that.

No introduction required. No gatekeeper. No elaborate proposal. No discussion of contracts or credentials.

What I remember most is not the poem itself, but the generosity of the gesture.

Pure class.

The poem was “Poet as Fisherman,” and it would become the final contribution to what was then an untitled project. With Ferlinghetti’s participation, the book finally felt complete. The collection was eventually published as 4 Poets, bringing together four distinct voices in a modest edition that remains one of my favorite early publishing efforts.

Years later, Ferlinghetti included “Poet as Fisherman” in These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems 1955–1993, published by New Directions. I’m glad he did. But I’ll always remember the moment before that, when the poem existed simply as a few sheets of paper in a folder carried by one of America’s greatest poets.

4 Poets was published in an edition of 232 copies, along with 11 special copies featuring variant covers. Those special copies were never intended as a deluxe issue. They were simply experiments—different papers I was considering for the cover stock. Like many things in small-press publishing, they survived because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.

Looking back, what stays with me most is Ferlinghetti’s kindness. A young publisher asks for a poem, and one of the giants of American poetry simply says yes.

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How the synaesthesia press Got Its Name | Steve Fisher & Denis Johnson

It’s 1990. Maybe 1991.

I’m on the phone with a cat named Steve Fisher. We’re having some fairly serious conversations about starting a publishing company. At one point Steve says, “Let’s call it the synaesthesia press.”

“I’m all for that,” I told him.

The plan was simple. We’d contact writers we admired and ask them for work. Steve thought we should start with a broadside series and then move into chapbooks. It sounded perfectly reasonable.

After we hung up, I remember running to a dictionary to look up the word synaesthesia.

Steve quickly secured a poem from Denis Johnson. Naturally, it was a keeper. It wasn’t long thereafter I went to a Lawrence Ferlingetti reading.

Then life intervened.

Steve vanished; not too long later I would learn that he was gone for good. Or, as Iggy Pop once said, “Heroin Hates You.”

In the winter of 1994, I made a commitment to the synaesthesia press and decided to move forward with the idea we had talked about years earlier. The following spring I published the press’s first two books.

The Denis Johnson poem eventually appeared in 4 Poets. So did work from Ferlinghetti, along with a few contributions from a writer I never spoke to directly but admired enough to pursue. Looking back, the book feels like a snapshot of everything Steve and I originally hoped the press might become.

It’s funny how these things work. A phone call. A name. A poem. Then years pass.

The synaesthesia press still exists because of that conversation.