"I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter," said Charles Bukowski, the author of more than 40 books of poetry, prose and novels, including Ham on Rye and Post Office. Bukowski, who died on March 9, 1994, aged 73, used his poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life in America. He was also an avid reader. The book Charles Bukowski: On Writing features previously unpublished letters. Here are 12 things we learned from them:

He was graphic about his own drinking

"For 7 or 8 years I wrote very, very little. I was quite a drunk. I ended up in the charity ward of the hospital with holes in my belly, heaving up blood like a waterfall. . . I was spitting my stomach out through my mouth and ass."

Yay to DH Lawrence, nay to Faulkner

"DH Lawrence was solid all the way through but Henry Miller was more modern, less artsy, until he got into his Star-Trek babbling . . . with William Faulkner, the public has swallowed him with one big gulp - but a lot of Faulkner's pure sh-t, but it's clever sh-t, cleverly dressed."

Poetry writing is for the young

"Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master . . . it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem, that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems."