Literature Poet

Softcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 482 pages. In this book Professor Gelpi traces the emergence of American Modernist poetry as a reaction to, and outgrowth of, the Romantic ideology of the nineteenth century. He focuses on the remarkable generation of poets who came to maturity in the years of the First World War and whose works constitute the principal body of poetic Modernism in English. This large historical argument is developed through monographic chapters on the poets which include close readings of their major poems. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes in bright dust jackets, 408 and 388 pages. The secular Latin poetry of the Middle Ages is at once great in bulk and interesting in kind, embracing as it does lyrical, epical, satirical, philosophical, grammatical, and historical verse. The rhetorical tradition of the ancient world can be traced throughout its development, from the fifth to the thirteenth century, when the tradition passes over into the new literary vernaculars. No adequate English survey of this delightful and historically important literature has hitherto been made. These volumes form a sequel to the same author's 'History of Christian-Latin Poetry', and the two works together offer a complete introduction to the whole field of medieval Latin poetry. First published in 1934. Clean copies.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 242 pages. The Arab poet's story, from her childhood in Nablus, on the West Bank of the Jordan, between the world wars to the occupation by the Israelis in 1967. A rare glimpse of Arab culture from a woman's perspective. Includes a selection of her poetry. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 474 pages. This wonderful collection contains all of Bogan's criticism, most of it written during her many years as poetry critic for The New Yorker magazine. "One does not easily recall another writer of such stature who served her fellow writers, and the reading public, for so long, or with such pertinence and distinction." She lived from 1897-1970. Flap price crossed out with smaller price in ink. Otherwise like new condition.

Softcover. Galway, The Friends of Thoor Ballylee, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 8 page booklet printed at The Brewhouse Press for The Friends of Thoor Ballylee in a limited numbered edition of 500 copies. This is copy #66. Produced by Rigby Graham and Trevor Hickman. Green wrap-around outer card covers with gilt illustration on front cover. Thread bound. Two b/w drawings (including frontispiece) and one color illustration by Rigby Graham. Laid in is a note card signed by curator Frances MacNally. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge, MA , Harvard University Press, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. INSCRIBED TO LOUIS UNTEMEYER BY WHITMAN on half-title. Title-page engraving by Michael McCurdy (repeated on dust jacket ). Dust jacket with light edgewear.

Hardcover. Brussels, B. Le Francq, 1st Thus, 1798, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 4 volumes. Leather bound hardcovers. Text in ENGLISH & FRENCH Books measure: 3.75"W by 5.75"L. Volume 1 - Front cover loose from book. Crack in leather length of spine - text block still firm. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 2 black & white illustrations. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 2 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Half of front endpaper removed. 2 black & white illustrations. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 3 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 1 black & white illustration. Moderate rubbing to leather covers. Volume 4 - Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. 1 black & white illustration. Moderate rubbing to leather covers.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 594 pages. A landmark in postwar American literary criticism, forty-one extended essays on contemporary poets, including Robert Bly, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, and James Merrill. Blending biography, textual analysis, and philosophical reflection, it defined a generation's poetic discourse. The book stands as both a map of mid-century American verse and a statement of Howard's erudite critical voice. Light shelfwear, fraying to top, bottom of dust jacket spine. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 259 pages. When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O'Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started forty years earlier. As a lifelong O'Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O'Hara's past, but also her father's, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet explores what happens when we want to do better than our parents, yet fear what that might cost us; when we seek their approval, yet mistrust it.

Softcover. NY, New Directions, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 367 pages. (previously published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1966). Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Spuyten Duyvil, 1st, 1999, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 187 pages, Essays on contemporary American literature. Small bump to edge causing a slight wave to top edge, Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 351 pages. Green cloth with embossed gilt lettering on spine. With an Introduction by Peter Green and chapters including: The Meaning of Influence / Mr Eliot and the French Symbolist Poets / The Perspective of History / The Perspective of Language / The Perspective of Myth / etc. Short inscription on front fly leaf, darkening to dj, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 375 pages. B&W photographs and illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Green cloth with gilt title to spine. Erratum laid-in. Overall, a clean, tight copy. ohn Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The poet best known for writing hymns of praise to athletic middle-class girls on the tennis courts led a tempestuous emotional life. For much of his fifty-year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a field marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. Betjeman, published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth, is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to his private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. Here too are chronicled his many friendships, ranging from "Bosie" Douglas to the young satirists of Private Eye, from the Mitford sisters to the Crazy Gang. This is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer. Betjeman was the classic example of the melancholy clown, whose sadness found its perfect mood music in the hymns of a poignant Anglicanism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Providence RI, Brown University Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Original gray boards, large format. Non-paginated (43 pages). William Blake's illustrations for Robert Blair's 'The Grave'. Some rubbing and lightly bumped corners on covers. Spine/hinge paper with narrow paper separation on upper 4". Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Limited Editons Club, 1st Thus, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 73 pages. Limited Editions Club. SIGNED ON LAST PAGE BY PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD MEAD ATWATER BENSON. HAND NUMBERED #794 OF 2000. Bound in silvery gray cloth, with title stamped in dark blue on spine. Slipcase features a blue wave motif on paper, with cloth at top and bottom of case. 2 minor spots of rubbing at left top edge of paper on slipcase. A bright, clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Clayton Eshleman, 1st, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in yellow wrappers, 160 pages. Edited and published by Clayton Eshleman. B/w illustrations. Bibliographical references. Includes advertising matter. Stiff yellow wrappers, printed black. Contains contributions by Robert Duncan, Larry Eigner, Jack Hirschman, Michael McClure, Charles Olson, Adrienne Rich, Diane Wakoski, et al.; plus book reviews, etc. Light soil to wrappers, no markings.

Hardcover. Santa Rosa CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 67 pages. Printed paper over boards backed in brown cloth with matching paper spine label. Acetate dust jacket. Remainder mark to top edge.

Hardcover. Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans Publishing , 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 199 pages. A brief account of Williams' life and examination of his early poems, the criticism, biographies and plays, the novels, the Arthurian poems and his theological writings. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer endured his worst year, but began his best poem. The father of English literature did not enjoy in his lifetime the literary celebrity that he has today--far from it. The middle-aged Chaucer was living in London, working as a midlevel bureaucrat and sometime poet, until a personal and professional crisis set him down the road leading to The Canterbury Tales. Brought expertly to life by Paul Strohm, this is the eye-opening story of the birth one of the most celebrated literary creations of the English language. INSCRIBED BY STROHM on the title page.

Ann Arbor MI, University of Michigan Press, 2nd pr., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 334 pages. Sunning to spine, else near fine in wrappers. Edited by Anne Wright. A volume in the "Poets on Poetry". Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 472 pages. The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910-1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse. The Collected Prose brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are Call Me Ishmael, a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called "muthologos," a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light gray cloth with maroon and gilt title on spine, 608 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 248 pages. Errata slip laid in. Name on blank prelim pages. Otherwise clea.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 166 pages. Pindar (c. 518-438 B.C.), one of ancient Greece's most famous lyric poets, is perhaps best known for his victory (epinicean) odes, written to honor the winners at various sets of games, such as the Olympiad. In Crown of Song, Deborah Steiner's study of these odes, she writes "If Pindar is remote from us in genre, his style strikes the reader as vivid and immediate. And in my reading of the epinicean odes, it is the poet's use of metaphor that accounts for the dynamic quality of his verse." Steiner begins her analysis by exploring both ancient and modern theories of metaphor, and then turns to specific imagery employed by the poet--plant life, athletics, minerals and numerous others--as a way of understanding how these metaphoric complexes function in the poet's praise of the victor, his assertion of his own place as perpetuator of the victor's immortal fame, and in his vision of human achievement and glory in the context of mortal life and immortal gods. Written in a lively, readable style, Crown of Song opens up the sometimes difficult verse of this celebrated ancient poet to modern readers. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.