Fire Station
Charles Bukowski
Nine poems cut from The Days Run Away during editing, rescued into the last of the early Bukowski chapbooks.
Fire Station, published by Capra Press of Santa Barbara in March 1970, is a chapbook of nine Charles Bukowski poems with an unusual origin: they were cut from The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills during its editing the year before — length and cost constraints as well as selection were involved. The bibliographer Sanford Dorbin gathered the leftovers and took them to Capra, which produced the book — designed, printed and bound by Noel Young and Graham Mackintosh — by special arrangement with Black Sparrow Press, in hardcover and softcover. The title poem, "Fire Station (For Jane, With Love)", is an afternoon spent drunk playing cards with firemen, and its dedication ties the little book to the woman whose elegies fill the collection it was cut from. It is generally counted the last of the early Bukowski chapbooks.
The book is a footnote that documents an editorial process: what was cut from the 1969 collection, and what a fledgling second press did with the cut material. Capra and Black Sparrow shared a printer in Noel Young, which is how a second imprint came to publish the cut material with Black Sparrow's blessing. After Fire Station, the era of the scattered Bukowski chapbook effectively closes; from the 1970s on, the poems flowed into the Black Sparrow collections instead.
The rare chance to read what was cut from a major collection during its editing — the book's making, visible in the negative.
The title poem's dedication adds a coda to the Jane elegies of The Days Run Away.
1969
The poems are cut from The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills during editing.
1970
Capra Press publishes the nine cut poems as Fire Station, in March, by arrangement with Black Sparrow.
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
Charles Bukowski
The collection these nine poems were cut from during editing — and the home of the Jane elegies the title poem's dedication joins.
Read our takeMockingbird Wish Me Luck
Charles Bukowski
The next Black Sparrow collection, once the chapbook era had closed.
Read our takeBurning in Water, Drowning in Flame
Charles Bukowski
The in-print selected volume for the period around these poems.
Read our takeA chapbook of nine Charles Bukowski poems published by Capra Press of Santa Barbara in March 1970 — poems cut from The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills during its editing.
The bibliographer Sanford Dorbin gathered the cut poems and took them to Capra Press, which published them by special arrangement with Black Sparrow. The two presses shared the printer Noel Young.
"Fire Station (For Jane, With Love)" recounts an afternoon spent drunk playing cards with firemen. The dedication is to Jane Cooney Baker, the woman mourned throughout The Days Run Away.
After 1970, Bukowski's poems went into the Black Sparrow collections rather than scattering across small one-off imprints. Fire Station closes the chapbook era that began with Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail in 1960.
Only via the rare-book market or special collections — it has never been reprinted as a standalone volume.
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
French writer and philosopher whose novels, memoirs, and social analysis examined freedom, gender, responsibility, aging, and the material conditions that shape a life.
View author
Author of The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast; his pared-down style, developed in 1920s Paris, became the most imitated in American prose.
View authorThe sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Fire Station, its publication, and its place in literary history.
The primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
The Bukowski papers, which hold the manuscripts and correspondence of the chapbook years.
The Capra publication, the Dorbin assembly, the poems cut from The Days Run Away, and the title poem's dedication.
Bibliographic details of the Capra edition checked against the checklist.
The close of the chapbook era in the career arc.
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
Explore more resources