Official Website for Samuel H. Dunski where we strive to keep his writings alive and available for his myriad fans and detractors.

Available now!

• Words & Burds
• Bullets and Dive Bars (oop)
• Wet & wild dreams upon a sandy beach (oop)
• Death crawls over my skin like A Large, hairy, Green Spider that eats her young
   
• The First Hippie:(Sex, Drugs, Rock n’ Roll & LOVE: Speaking Tongues along the Chaos Rainbow)

[Note to all Pedants: All punctuation, capitalization and "mistakes" herein are fully intended, because Samuel H. Dunski is a cantankerous bastard and possesses a poetic license. Legal Notice]

Order books by clicking here or on the button on the left identified by the word "Products", Dummy.

Dunski Who?

Samuel H. Dunski—considered by many itinerate intellectuals and loquacious degenerates to be the Supreme Allied Commander of the International Poetry Scene in the 21st century—was born into humble circumstances in Hora, Iowa, in 1950. His parents, Bartholomew and Esmeralda Dunski, moved him to Southern California when he was ten, where they settled into the sunny West Coast middle-class lifestyle. He began his illustrious writing career at public school, considered by his classmates as a recluse and iconoclastic troublemaker. Nonetheless, he was a leader among his fellow students, and excelled in such sports as backgammon, chess and entertaining his female peers. At the age of 12, he began playing sax in the local bars of LA and Oxnard, Fresno and San Francisco. In His teens, he partied with the likes of The Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf; and meeting many of the Jazz and Rock Greats of the time; playing at Fillmore West, Winterland and many a dive bar..

Illustrious Beginnings

At the age of twenty-eight he abandoned his college pursuits and ventured forth into the real world where he sallied into his career as spot welder. Soon after this he started his serious poetry and short stories; all said to have been instigated by a mysterious crises that brought him to the brink of mental disaster and near-total breakdown. To recover, he turned to drugs, booze, candy bars—and poetry and novels.

As he rose through the ranks of the everyday, average, run-of-the-mill, chained-to-the-streets, can't-write-shit-to-save-their-ass writers, his work began to shine beyond them. His radiant prose lifted him, like Prometheus, high above the clouds and lesser lights of intellectually-hidebound poet-wimps and wannabes. Dunski's novels and books of poetry were beginning to garner serious praise from the near-established arbiters of poetic taste, and the critics. 

Waging the War of Words

He figuratively pummeled and smashed and ground to little itsy bits the skulls of his fellow literary rivals with his acute wit and unique, philosophical observations. Dunski turned that smelly, stinking, heap of life which is our lives, our everyday trivia, into a scintillating fairyland. His effect on contemporary poetry resembled a blood-soaked, carnage-ridden car wreck on Interstate 405.

He became a sedentary nomad, moving from apartment to apartment, in the greater Los Angeles area. During this time, Dunski's prowess as a "cherche la femme" kind-of-guy and seminal lover of the opposite sex (that is, women) gained him a reputation that extended from the alleys of the notorious Venice Beach to the mansions of Beverly Hills, including the clandestine garment district, particularly near the corner of 4th and Hope Street. His prodigious output of novels, short stories and poetry came at a thundering roll off of his word processor like sweat off the back of a charging  male rhino in heat.

Fortune Smiles on the Worthy

Upon meeting the scurrilous Nathan Nil, a publisher who took a chance on his first book of poetry, Words & Burds—his life took an upward swing with the sky-rocketing sales of the book. His fans grew legion after the premiere of Bullets And Dive Bars especially on the East Coast, West Coast and, curiously, in Sumatra. Fame and fortune were fast approaching, like a red-headed banshee with purple lipstick, the shade of the fires of Hell. His first Puletzer was awarded in 1988 for the twisted, inimitable Death crawls over my skin like A Large, hairy, Green Spider that eats her young. His successive works made fortunes for him and his publishing house, and were greeted with open arms, wallets and condoms by the writing critics and poetry-reading public alike. His second Puletzer was awarded for I Was A Male Prostitute in a Balinese Brothel. 

Flush with success, he moved to Malibu to gorge upon his long-anticipated feast of high consumption. His cup did floweth over, spillith down upon the sandy ground, and oft ruined the Chinese carpets of the mansion he had leasethed—for which he did eventually loseth his substantial security deposit.  He soon became disillusioned with the lowlifes of highlife in this sunny paradise and his poetry suffered a reversible downturn. He could write nothing in these circumstances. Zip. Nada. Zilche.  Desperate, he abandoned the Shangri-La of beach life for a return to his beloved city. Unfortunately, he was broke and homeless until rescued by his long lost girlfriend, Juanita Grabowski.

Twists and Turns along the Way

Dunski proceeded to live out his erstwhile existence with Juanita while he plumbed the depths of his residual, fragmentary soul. He found himself unsure of his literary talents, and he worried that his new work was insubstantial. To bring his writing to new heights he dove deep beneath the existential abyss of the meanings of life and death. He pushed the limits of his luck and the envelope of chance. That is, he went off the deep end.  Even so, after his problematic and controversial demise, Big Sammy D. immediately entered the annals of the literary pantheon.

He is beloved by true poetry fans, as well as the many stunning, bitchy, head-strong women from all walks of life whom he had befriended, and with whom he had shared his bed and other satyristic, poetic enjoyments. There was even talk, at one time, of a statue to be erected in Dunski's honor in an LA city park—a site highly favored by a motley collection of indigenous tramps and winos. But the notion was abandoned when the erudite city council realized the money expended on such an enterprise would diminish the very coffers supporting their city-funded, fact-finding junkets to the Bahamas, Hawaii and Paris. 

There is Greatness in our Midst

And so, we stand in mute tribute, our mouths shut, our eyes clamped, to that one, great light of literary and poetic sensibility that graces this vast and vacuous, cultural no-man's land—Los Angeles: Samuel H. Dunski, Poet Extraordinaire. Long may he wave over the city of perpetual smoke (that is, we mean, the multi-hued smokes of many kinds). Big Sammy, we love you. We have you forever. “Sam Dunski Lives.”

Hey, as long as you've read this far; why don't you scroll back to the top and buy a book?

The Amazing Music of SuperKnowVa, wherein Mr. Dunski plays Electric Saxophone:

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Copyright © 2007 Sam Dunski
Last modified: 12/21/20