Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis, Memoir by Joan Jobe Smith

Within the next few weeks, Silver Birch Press will release Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me), a memoir by Joan Jobe Smith. Joan’s legions of fans have been asking her to write this book for many years — and it soon will be available around the world!

The book features scores of rare photos and illustrations of Charles Bukowski and the women he loved, as well as interviews with Bukowski insiders, Joan Jobe Smith’s reportage of Bukowski readings, along with her artwork and poetry — and much more.

Here’s a sampling from the memoir…

OH, HENRY

Poem by Joan Jobe Smith

Bukowski told me the reason he chose

Charles for his writer name instead of

Henry his real first name was because

He didn’t think Henry a very writerly

name and I, a full-of-myself undergrad

said, But what about Henry James, Henry

Miller, Henrik Ibsen, O. Henry? And Charles

Bukowski laughed, letting me know he was

glad I wasn’t the bimbo he thought I was, and

I laughed, glad he didn’t think me a bimbo

and he laughed some more, harder, his eyes

twinkling, his teeth big and white as he let me

know it wasn’t so much knowledge he had

but psychic insight and that he could see right

through me and I stopped laughing because it

was scarier than hell to be known so well.

Coming Soon: Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis by Joan Jobe Smith

NEW RELEASE FROM SILVER BIRCH PRESS

Available in early November 2012 — Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis by Joan Jobe Smith. 

“In her respectful, affectionate literary profile, Joan Jobe Smith shares up-close, personal recollections of her extraordinary mentor, fellow writer, and friend Charles Bukowski, along with the remembrances and comments of the fabulous women he loved — Frances Dean Smith (francEyE), Anne Menebroker, Linda King, and Pamela Miller Wood. Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis is a no-holds-barred celebration of this incomparable bard of the racetracks and bars and hard streets of Los Angeles.” FRED VOSS, award-winning poet and author of Hammers and Hearts of the Gods

“Charles Bukowski emphasized the importance of style and grace in everything and, as her mentor, the old man would not be disappointed. Like a sparkling bijou, Joan Jobe Smith is a gift to the world of art and humanity.” PAMELA MILLER WOOD, author of Charles Bukowski’s Scarlet

“The poems of Joan Jobe Smith have the reality of force properly put down on paper…a game girl…she cuts herself loose into the stratosphere…a strange woman, a strange, good, basic woman.” CHARLES BUKOWSKI