First Poems.

MERRILL, James.

$1,600.00

Item Number: 143437

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

First edition of the author’s first regularly published book. Octavo, original maroon cloth. One of 990 numbered copies printed, this is number 912. Association copy, signed and inscribed by the author on the title page with a four-line stanza from his poem White Stag, Black Bear, “…We called the autumn night his lair, Yet knew it ours, who long ago released, movements of such persuasiveness in the beast, that seven stars became a bear. James Merrill for Robert A. Wilson.” The recipient, Robert A. Wilson was an noted bibliophile, publisher and proprietor of the Phoenix Book Shop in Greenwich Village. Wilson became the fifth owner of the book shop in 1959 and transformed it into a sanctuary for new poetry, an important trading post for first editions, and a destination and hangout for his, and his customers’, literary idols including Allen Ginsberg, Edward Albee, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and W. H. Auden. With Wilson’s original bill of sale from House of Books, Ltd in New York laid in. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco chemise and clamshell box.

American poet James Ingram Merrill's poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyric poetry of his early career, and the epic narrative of occult communication with spirits and angels, titled The Changing Light at Sandover (published in three volumes from 1976 to 1980), which dominated his later career. His first book of poetry, First Poems, contains a selection of his earliest poems, most of which first appeared in The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, and Quarterly Review of Literature including: The Black Swan, The Broken Bowl, Hour-Glass, and The Drowning Poet.