Browse Similar Items
SHAVING AT NIGHT.
(San Francisco: Meadow Press, 1982). 246 x 155 mm. (9 3/4 x 6 1/8"). 29, [1] pp., [1] leaf. No. 140 OF 200 COPIES.
Quarter dark blue cloth over cream paper boards, upper cover with large woodcut image and pink lettering, smooth spine with printed paper label. With three full-page woodcut illustrations by Helen Siegl. Printed in pink and black. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the half-title: "For Laure-Ann & Kurt: I forgot all about this book! Love, Charlie, Feb 10, 1996"; and SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR on the limitation page. Spine lightly sunned, edges with a small bump and lower board with a tiny spot; contents pristine.
This attractive small press production features Charles Simic's poetry illustrated with the haunting woodcuts of Helen Siegl. Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and U.S. Poet Laureate for 2007-08, Simic (1938-2023), wrote moving, surrealistic poetry based on his own experiences, particularly his traumatic childhood in what was then Yugoslavia. The 15 poems in this collection take the reader wading through Simic's dreamscape, visiting the rattling New York City subway and a quiet mountain road, while ghostly and comical characters appear and disappear. Printed in a muted midnight blue, the woodcuts by Austrian-American artist Siegl (1924-2009) provide highly textured scenes that, like the poems they illustrate, deftly blend the funny and phantasmic. The present production is the work of the Meadow Press, founded by artist and printer Leigh McLellan in 1974. The Meadow productions are small hand press editions that focus on art, design, and book construction. As the friendly inscription indicates, our copy is from the collection of Laure-Anne Bosselaar (b. 1943) and her husband Kurt Brown (1944-2013). Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, and editor who has published numerous works of poetry in multiple languages, including five collections of her own works. She has received various prizes and recognitions (Pushcart, Isabella Gardner, Breadloaf) and was named Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara in 2019. Sometimes publishing jointly with Bosselaar, Brown was also a prolific poet and editor of anthologies, as well as the founder and first director of the Aspen Writer's Conference, playing a pivotal role in shaping its early vision and establishing Aspen as a literary center. It was through the Aspen Writer's Conference that Bosselaar and Brown became friends with Simic, when Brown invited Simic to speak at the conference in the early 1990s. Bosselaar, reminiscing on a friendship of over two decades, wrote that "Charlie . . . and Kurt had a great friendship, and shared a common love for wine & poetry--so, often, the Simics would come to our house, and we’d have a 'good bottle' or two around a dinner I'd cook for them." Given its limited press run, Shaving at Night has always been scarce, and it seems not to be offered for sale anywhere else at present. (ST20338-115)
Price: $300.00