poetry poets

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 422 pages. Poets of the twentieth century Elizabeth Bishop's friend James Merrill once observed that 'Elizabeth had more talent for life--and for poetry--than anyone else I've known.' This new biography reveals just how she learned to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create a brilliant array of poems, prose, and letters--a remarkable body of work that would make her one of America's most beloved and celebrated poets. In Love Unknown, Thomas Travisano tells the story of the famous poet and traveler's life. Bishop moved through extraordinary mid-twentieth century worlds with relationships among an extensive international array of literati, visual artists, musicians, scholars, and politicians -- along with a cosmopolitan gay underground that was then nearly invisible to the dominant culture. Drawing on fresh interviews and newly discovered manuscript materials, Travisano illuminates that the 'art of losing' that Bishop celebrated with such poignant irony in her poem 'One Art' --perhaps her most famous-- was linked in equal part to an 'art of finding,' Like new.

Softcover. San Diego, Junction Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 220 pages. A veteran of the New York avant-garde still best remembered for her rebellious '60s play Futz, Owens resurrects the painter Leonardo da Vinci; two of his models, Flora and Mona (Lisa); his student Salia; and Luca, his teacher. Luca is given the poem's near-omniscient "I"; the piece as a whole is less concerned with the biographical Leonardo than with the physical, social and emotional circumstances of representative creation and the elaboration of sexual expression in portraits. To this end there are many descriptions of women's bodies that are spat back at the reader-as-observer in colloquial bursts. INSCRIBED BY OWENS on the half-title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1st, 1938, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. Frontispiece illustration by Rockwell Kent. 1000 pages plus commentary in rear by John Crowe Ransom, William Carlos Williams and others. Previous owner's name on title page, gutter loose at title page. Rear hinge cracked. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Very good in an unclipped dust jacket. The scenery of Iceland, the South seas, and the American South, the awakening of first love, and the meaning of speech are some of the topics treated in this collection of poems by the novelist and critic. He is a poet the same way Somerset Maugham is a thinker; the poems are set in dozens of exotic locales and glitter like fireflies against the night of the page. As the title suggests, one exotic locale is pretty much the same as any other for Brad Leithauser, as long as you get mail from it. The messages that come through tell little stories, almost as though they weren't big enough to be used as the raw material for his novels.

Softcover. NY, Corinth Books, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 47 pages, limited to 1500 copies. The cover design is from a collage by Joe Brainard. Crease to bottom corner of front cover, clean copy.

Hardcover. Hopewell NJ, Ecco Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 146 pages, dark gray boards with black cloth spine. Bright dust jacket, unclipped.

Softcover. London/NY, Cape Goliard Press/Grossman, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Softcover, illustrated wrappers with glassine dust wrapper. Unpaginated but well over 100 pages. First printing of the second volume of Olson's poetic opus. Clean copy.

Softcover. Santa Rose CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 198 pages. INSCRIBED BY WAKOSKI on the title page to author and teacher Paul Christensen, Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Grove Press , 3rd pr., Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 214 pages. Cover price of $2.45, E-552, ISBN number on rear cover so post 1970. Clean copy. This is the 3rd printing of the original Mexico City Blues (242 Choruses) by Jack Kerouac, a long poem composed of 242 "choruses" or stanzas, which was first published in 1959. It has been the inspiration for multiple films and novels, and serves as a pillar of Kerouac's oeuvre.

Softcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 132 pages, b&w illustrations. First edition, issued simultaneously with the hardcover edition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 77 pages, clean copy. A collection of poetry by the first African-American woman to be the U.S. Poet Laureate.

Softcover. Grandville MI, Nada Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. Contributors include William Burroughs, Jr., Antler, Anne Waldeman. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 81 pages. A very clean, tight copy. The critically acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton embraces life, from our naked beginnings to the first signs of middle age and beyond, in this inviting collection of poems. The book opens with the dramatic birth of twins, and speaks in the intimate voice of a husband, father, and poet. Diverse products of the imagination pass through Haxton's generous mind--the mysterious number zero, Milton's "Lycidas," nuclear technology--even as he captures the humor and pathos of the everyday. In these brief, exquisite lyrics, meditations, and short stories in verse, he immerses his reader in the heat of teenage rivalry and friendship, the tender comedy of sex, and the amazements of the natural world.

Softcover. NY, New Directions, 1st pbk., 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 119 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 259 pages. Written in a pared-down, direct language, and filled with allusions to everything from philosophy to TV talk shows, the poetry of Tadeusz Rozewicz encompasses the complexity of human experience in the early 21st century. Rozewicz's unique voice, formed during his experiences as a member of the Polish resistance in World War II, and honed by decades living under communist rule, holds a merciless mirror up to the crimes and excesses of the poet's lifetime. In his eighties now, Rozewicz continues to be a prolific writer and an acerbic commentator on his life and times. This collection combines his latest three volumes: professor's knife, gray zone, and exit. These are extraordinary poems from an acknowledged European master. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Yellow Moon Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, First Printing. No limitation stated. A very good copy in tan printed wrappers, the paperbound trade issue. Unpaginated. Translations in English, with Illustrations by Rita Shumaker, and an introductory statement "Why Rumi Didn't Sign His Poems" by Barks. INSCRIBED BY ROBERT BLY with a sketch on the front fly leaf.

Softcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 87 pages. Name on front fly leaf, clean copy.

Softcover. Seattle, Wave Books, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 45 pages. Limited to 400 copies. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 78 pages. Previous owner's pencil inscription on front endpaper. Dust jacket chipped, edgeworn, unclipped with 4.50 price.

Softcover. Baylor University Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 226 pages. The English poet U. A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) liked to call herself "a middle-aged drop-out," having abandoned a successful teaching career to focus on her poetry, even concealing her Oxford degree so she could find paid work--at Hoover, then as a hospital receptionist. This gave her a chance to study people, which is what her wonderful poems do best. Fanthorpe's verse is instinctively English, often very moving, frequently funny, invariably rooted in her faith. Fanthorpe and her partner, Rosie Bailey, became Quakers in the 1980s. These poems touch on spiritual matters, dramatize Bible stories, and are underpinned by a profound moral sense. Fanthorpe does not judge; rather, she watches, records, and allows her words to do their work. Clean copy.

Softcover. Burlington VT, Rumble Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 28 pages, plain stiff white paper wraps, outer layer of light purple rice paper with title label pasted on front, pages tied with string at spine, hand printed by Bruce Conklin, #82/400 copies, poems of self-awareness published in celebration of Sarton's eightieth birthday, Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A dark, no-holds-barred, and often hilarious collection from a prize-winning poet, veering between the poles of self and world. Kim Addonizio's sharp and irreverent eighth volume, Now We're Getting Somewhere, is an essential companion to your practice of the Finnish art of kalsarikannit-drinking at home, alone in your underwear, with no intention of going out. Imbued with the poet's characteristic precision and passion, the collection charts a hazardous course through heartache, climate change, dental work, Outlander, semiotics, and more. Combatting existential gloom with a wicked, seductive energy, Addonizio investigates desire, loss, and the madness of contemporary life. She calls out to Walt Whitman and John Keats, echoes Dorothy Parker, and finds sisterhood with Virginia Woolf.Sometimes confessional, sometimes philosophical, these poems weave from desolation to drollery and clamor with raucous imagery: an insect in high heels, a wolf at an uncomfortable party, a glowing and self-serious guitar.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday and Co., reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with publisher's sticker on front. INSCRIBED BY KENNEDY on the front fly leaf and signed "Joe Kennedy". 71 pages, his first book of poetry. No First Edition statement but 1961 on title page, $2.50 on flap. Clean copy.

Softcover. San Francisco, Kayak Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, stapled wraps. One of 800 copies, decorative blue wraps, colored papers, colorful silkscreen art prints by George Hitchcock mixed in text. Second book by the Swedish-American poet, 68 pages. Small name on copyright page otherwise clean.