Berrigan, Ted
CLEAR THE RANGE
Adventures in Poetry, Coach House South, New York: 1977
- $125
135,[6] pp.Original pictorial wrappers. Wrappers moderately rubbed, light creasing in upper-outer corner of front wrapper, else near fine. Published in a limited edition of 750 copies. "Larry Fagin notes that he published this book with David Rosenberg, who was then an editor at Coach House Press (Toronto). Rosenberg was living in New York at the time, hence the listing for Coach House Presss on the colophon. Compiler's collection inicludes the manuscript for this book, a paperback cowboy novel that Berrigan altered by 'writing through' in different-colored inks. According to Fagin, Berrigan used a copy of TWENTY NOTCHES by Max Brand. The front cover . is a self-portrait of Berrigan . the rear cover is a picture of a cheeseburger that has been cut out of a magazine and pasted down. Alice Notley adds, Ted liked the idea of 'the range' being a stove and proceeded from there" - Aaron Fischer, TED BERRIGAN : AN ANNOTATED CHECKLIST (Granary Books, 1988), p. 53. Cover by Berrigan and George Schneeman.
More from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera
THE NEW YORK SCHOOL POETS AND THE NEO-AVANT-GARDE : BETWEEN RADICAL ART AND RADICAL CHIC
Publisher's black cloth, spine lettered in silver, in color pictorial dust jacket. Light shelfwear to jacket, else fine. From the publisher: "New York City was the site of a remarkable cultural and artistic renaissance during the 1950s and '60s. In the first monograph to treat all five major poets of the New York School-John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler-Mark Silverberg examines this rich period of cross-fertilization between the arts. Silverberg uses the term 'neo-avant-garde' to describe New York School Poetry, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Happenings, and other movements intended to revive and revise the achievements of the historical avant-garde, while remaining keenly aware of the new problems facing avant-gardists in the age of late capitalism. Silverberg highlights the family resemblances among the New York School poets, identifying the aesthetic concerns and ideological assumptions they shared with one another and with artists from the visual and performing arts. A unique feature of the book is Silverberg's annotated catalogue of collaborative works by the five poets and other artists. To comprehend the coherence of the New York School, Silverberg demonstrates, one must understand their shared commitment to a reconceptualized idea of the avant-garde specific to the United States in the 1950s and '60s, when the adversary culture of the Beats was being appropriated and repackaged as popular culture. Silverberg's detailed analysis of the strategies the New York School poets used to confront the problem of appropriation tells us much about the politics of taste and gender during the period, and suggests new ways of understanding succeeding generations of artists and poets." SILENI ALCIBIADIS.* I.E. ARS SANANDI, CUM EXPECTATIONE. OPPOSITA ARS CURANDI NUDA EXPECTATIONE: SATYRA HARVEANA CASTIGATAE. CUPIDUS PRUDENTI USUI: STUPIDIS RUDENTI LUSUI. . .
Harvey, Gideon; Georg Ernest Stahl [10],246 pp. plus frontispiece and two folding tables. In Latin. Early three-quarter vellum and speckled paper over boards, raised bands, manuscript paper title and shelf labels. Early shelf number inscription in front free endpaper, light institutional inkstamp in title page. Lightly rubbed, extremities worn. Very good. George Ernest Stahls influential Latin edition of Gideon Harveys ARS CURANDI MORBOS EXPECTATIONE (first published in English in 1689). Stahl published both ARS CURANDI and his own critical response, ARS SANANDI CUM EXPECTATIONE, with a combined title page under the heading, SILENI ALCIBIADIS. The present example corresponds with Waller 4082: Harveys work alone, issued with the combined title and without a separate ARS CURANDI title leaf. Gideon Harvey (ca. 1640 ca. 1700) served as physician to Charles II and "physician of the tower" to William and Mary. Despite his connection to the Crown, Harvey was never a member of the College of Physicians and, during most of his career, operated in a hostile relationship with it. His ironically titled ARS CURANDI, CUM EXPECTATIONE ("The Art of Curing Diseases by Expectation") presents a series of "random criticisms of medical practice," which the DNB notes "acquired some reputation on the continent, through the patronage of a far greater man, George Ernest Stahl." While the DNB authors interpreted Stahls approach to Harvey as sympathetic, his publication of ARS SANANDI and notes in ARS CURANDI are at least satirical. His allusion to Erasmus and Plato in the title of SILENI ALCIBIADIS suggests Stahls view that behind the "ridiculous face" of doctors painted by Harvey was an opposite realitya profession "beautiful, serious, venerable."Cushing S383n. HEIRS TO HIPPOCRATES 455n. DNB XXV, p. 87.- $150
- $150
PASSAGES FROM JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE : A FILM BY EXPANDING CINEMA : DEDICATED TO FRANCES STELOFF [cover title]
[Joyce, James; Mary Ellen Bute (script treatment)] 11 x 8 1/2-inch leaves in an 11 1/2 x 9-inch folder. [4],58,[3] pp. Leaves in printed blue metal tab folder. Fine. PASSAGES FROM JAMES JOYCE'S FINNEGANS WAKE was the final film produced and directed by Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983), a pioneer in experimental film and animation. Bute spent much of her early career developing a style of "visual music" in film, synchronizing abstract images and music. PASSAGES, a film treatment of FINNEGANS WAKE using Joyce's original language, was largely a live-action piece but incorporated animation, double exposures, and various other unconventional visual methods. UbuWeb describes it as follows: "A half-forgotten, half-legendary pioneer in American abstract and animated filmmaking, Mary Ellen Bute, late in her career as an artist, created this adaptation of James Joyce, her only feature. In the transformation from Joyce's polyglot prose to the necessarily concrete imagery of actors and sets, Passages discovers a truly oneiric film style, a weirdly post-New Wave rediscovery of Surrealism, and in her panoply of allusion - 1950s dance crazes, atomic weaponry, ICBMs, and television all make appearances - she finds a cinematic approximation of the novel's nearly impenetrable vertically compressed structure. With Passages from Finnegans Wake Bute was the first to adapt a work of James Joyce to film and was honored for this project at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965 as best debut." The film was shown in limited capacities until its final release in 1967. Its screening of its first rush print, for which the present volume was produced, took place February 16, 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before an audience of the James Joyce Society in celebration of Joyce's birthday. The James Joyce Society was inaugurated in 1947 at the Gotham Book Bart. Bute dedicates her film to Gotham's founder and owner, Frances Steloff.- $40
- $40
AMERICAN MURDER BALLADS AND THEIR STORIES
Burt, Olive Woolley xiii,[3],272 pp. Publisher's tan paper over boards, front cover pictorially stamped in black, in pictorial dust jacket. Rubbing and light scuffing to dust jacket, with small closed tears at upper edge and early pencil graffiti on rear panel and penciled price revision in front inner flap. Fine in a good to very good dust jacket. Olive Wolley Burt (1894-1981) was an American journalist, teacher, writer, and folklorist, best known for her works in juvenile literature and for the present work, her only book written for an adut audience. Burt had a lifelong fascination with true crime stories, noting that in her childhood her mother clipped "mournful verses from newspapers and saved them in a scrapbook" and would sing dark lullabies to her children. While workinig at the DESERET NEWS in Salt Lake City during the late 1940s and 1950s, Burt began to compile research on American murder ballads, leading to the publication of this extensive work, which in 1959 eanred a special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The volume today is scarce.- $250
- $250
THE BABY BOOK
Elmslie, Kenward (words) & Joe Brainard (pictures) 11 inches. [37] leaves, of which 36 are illustrated, plus colophon printed on recto of rear cover. Stiff pictorial covers, side-stapled and backed in black cloth. Numbered and signed by Elmslie and Brainard. Minor soiling to rear cover, else fine. Numbered 27 of 500 copies (of which 1-50 were signed by the author and illustrator and 1-10 were specially bound and included a piece of the original manuscript). The first published collaboration exclusively between Joe Brainard and Kenward Elmslie. Clay and Phiillips, p. 266.- $350
- $350
C COMICS No. 2
Ashbery, John, Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Kenward Elmslie, Dick Gallup, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Frank Lima, Frank O'Hara, Ron Padgett, Peter Schjeldahl, Jimmy Schuyler, and Tony Towle 11 inches. [108] pp. plus both covers printed recto and verso, all illustrated. Stiff pictorial wrappers, stapled. Mild wear and light toning in covers, small marginal stain on rear cover. Near fine. The second and final issue of the comics mimeo publication bridging the work of the first and second generations of the New York School poets, with art by Joe Brainard (except, it is noted, "Pat" : "Pat is totally a collaboration."). Clay and Phillips, p. 164.- $500
- $500
DESCRIPTION DU MUSÉE MÉCANIQUE DE GEORGES TIETZ. CONTENANT: L’ÉLÉPHANT MÉCANIQUE D’O’MARTINET ET TABLEAUX DE L’HISTOIRE MODERNE ET DE LA BIBLE
[Tietz, Georges] 16 pp. plus 11 wood-engraved plates on 10 leaves (2 folding). Original printed self-wrappers. Light wear in outer leaves, half-inch closed tear at head of first leaf near fold, stitching largely absent, some toning. Near fine. Illustrated catalog of the Mechanical Museum of Georges Tietz, who exhibited his collection of automata (and, sometimes, wax anatomical figures) throughout Europe from the 1830s to the 1850s, with a visit to the U.S. in 1846. The catalog describes twenty exhibits of figures and tableaux, from marvels like a mechanical sun and a turbanned prestidigitator to scenes from the Bible, classical antiquity, and modern history like the behading of St. John the Baptist, Androcles and the lion, and the death of Marshal Lannes with Napoleon at the Battle of Aspern-Essling. The great centerpiece of the museum is the Elephant of Henri Martinet, which survives today at Waddeson Manor in Buckinghamshire. OCLC records three copies of a 23-page French edition supplied with a date of 1853, each copy bearing an imprint from a different city. Of these, the Reims imprint is available for view online at the website of the Bibliothèque nationale and shows twenty numbered tableaux and the same ten illustrations as the present edition. With fewer listed items and stronger plate impressions, the present edition (unrecorded on OCLC) appears to be earlier. Rare. From the collection of Ricky Jay.- $1,500
- $1,500
RUBAIYAT OF ACCOUNT OVERDUE
Morley, Christopher Small quarto. Single sheet folded twice. [4] pp. Lettered "HC" in contemporary red ink in the colophon. Near fine. The "deluxe" edition of a satirical poem composed by Christopher Morley and designed and printed by Lew Ney to help their friend and patron, Frances Steloff, founder and owner of Gotham Book Mart, during a moment of financial insecurity at the store in the mid-1930s. It "has been printed in this limited edition of 350 copies from Inkanabula type, imported from Italy. It was set by hand, and the type has been distributed." In the 1975 "Special Gotham Book Mart Issue" of JOURNAL OF MODERN LITERATURE (Vol. 4, No. 4), Frances Steloff describes the origin of the poem and its publication. One day in 1935, Steloff was dictating correspondence in the back of the shop, unaware that her friend and Gotham Book Mart regular Christopher Morley had stopped by. "He asked why I looked so glum, and I told him that I had been dictating dunning letters with the remark that if I could collect half of the outstanding accounts I could pay my rent and most of my bills. He asked if he could see a few of the letters, and I handed him the carbon copies. He then asked if he could borrow them. I was uneasy and thought that he might turn them over to an attorney, causing my customers embarrassment. He assured me that he just wanted to look them over and would return them on his next visit. In a few days he called up, 'Frances are you there?' Of course I was, and in a few minutes he was also, holding a page of manuscript. He asked excitedly, 'Are you familiar with the meter of the Rubaiyat?' I was, of course, as it had at one time been a favorite. He then read aloud the 'Rubaiyat of Account Overdue.' . . . Delighted with it, I decided to have it printed in two formats: a single page, to be sent with bills to all past due accounts, stating that a deluxe, autographed edition would be forthcoming on receipt of a check by return mail. That not only brought good results but also a problem - our prompt paying customers then felt it was more rewarding to be delinquent" (pp. 791-792). The present example of the poem was printed in its deluxe format, but not signed, and lettered, "HC" ("hors commerce"), rather than numbered, in the limitation statement. A fine survival from a touching and memorable chapter of the history of Gotham.- $60
- $60
TING PA 2
Maclise, Angus & Francis Brooks (eds.), Bill Barker, "Mongolian," Akis Vostanis, Karma Jimba Tzammo, Balakrishna Sama, Katie McDonald, Petra Vogt, T. V. Kapali Sastry, Ira Cohen & Karma Samde Drolma Folio (18 1/4 inches). [16] pp., including numerous woodblock illustrations (printed variously in black and red) plus 1 full-page woodblock print tipped in. In original pictorial wrappers, all on handmade rice paper. Small closed tears at head of front wrapper, light discoloration from original paste affixing large print, else fine. Numbered 102 of 150 copies. The second of three issues of TING PA, one of the early publications of the circle of American and European expatriate writers and artists living in Kathmandu during the 1970s. The woodblock illustrations include Himalayan and East Asian subjects, chiefly from religious traditions, as well as images drawn from the Rider-Waite Tarot.- $1,750
- $1,750
![DARK REFLECTIONS AND SOULDIERS [with:] DISCOVERY](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/31495271886-600x796.jpg)
DARK REFLECTIONS AND SOULDIERS [with:] DISCOVERY, REVOLUTION & UNDERSTANDING [and:] SECOND THE EMOTION
Fulani, Richard [3] volumes. 35; [4],31; 41,[1] pp. plus author's portrait and biography on recto of rear wrapper of third volume. Original stiff printed wrappers, stapled. Wrappers lightly worn and rubbed, else fine. The first three books of poetry by Richard Fulani, with covers printed, respectively, the pan-African colors of green, yellow, and red. The trilogy begins with Fulani's early poems, composed between 1968 and 1971, with the first part, DARK REFLECTIONS, considering on the breakthrough of new consciousness in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the second part, SOULDIERS, being a tribute to contemporary African American leaders, "a few of the millions who have made it possible for us to be able to say such things as 'Black is Beautiful' and 'I'm Black and I'm Proud.'" DISCOVERY, REVOLUTION & UNDERSTANDING contains poems "dedicated to the 'endarkenment' needed to see through the blinding, white light," and SECOND THE EMOTION "is a book of feeling," dedicated to "[l]ove, in its broadest sense."- $120
- $120
