Search Results: Poetry from Lightholder Books

Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver. 1995 Harcourt Brace/ Harvest Original, first paperback edition, 122 pages. Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer and National Book Award winning prolific poet who was greatly inspired by nature. Her career in poetry was unusual in that her books actually sold well. In her New York Times obituary: "For her abiding communion with nature, Ms. Oliver was often compared to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. For her quiet, measured observations, and for her fiercely private personal mien (she gave many >readings but few interviews, saying she wanted her work to speak for itself), she was likened to Emily Dickinson." Blue Pastures consists of fifteen short prose pieces.
Condition: VG. Inscription on end paper.
"I never met any of my friends, of course, in a usual way---they were strangers, and lived only in their writings."

Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire, translated by George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Preface by Miss Millay. 1936 Harper & Brothers, first thus edition, 282 pages. Both Dillon and Millay were renown, Pulitzer Prize-winning poets, so it is fitting that they provided this translation of the influential French poet Baudelaire and his most famous work. Includes the original French.
Condition: Jacket in poor condition, see photos, book in good condition, spine label missing, bumps and wear to boards, bookplate on marbled endpaper, pencil checkmarks on contents page, tanned page where a newspaper clipping acted as bookmark, bookstore sticker on last endpaper
"Come to my arms, cruel and sullen thing"

The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood. 1966 House of Anansi, later printing, 80 pages. Atwood is an award-winning Canadian poet and novelist, most well-known for the cultural and feminist touchstone Handmaid's Tale. Circle Game, her second book of poems, was the winner of the 1967 Governor General's Award.
Condition: Good, price sticker residue and creases on cover, a bit of separation of text block from cover
"The man came from nowhere
and is going nowhere."

Eureka Mill by Ron Rash. 1998 Bench Press, unstated edition, signed, 63 pages. Rash is a poet, short story writer, and novelist who often writes of Appalachia. Eureka was Rash's debut poetry collection which depicts life in the mill.
Condition: VG. Signed on title page
"After tonight I see why mill and hell
are spelled almost the same and sound alike."

Flesh and Paper by Suniti Namjoshi and Gillian Hanscombe. 1986 Ragweed Press, first edition, 64 pages. This dialogue in poems is sensual and lesbian-centered between Indian poet and fabulist Namjoshi and author and activist Hanscombe.
Condition: VG. Price sticker residue on back cover.
"Now we must, creature by creature,
number the ways she has lost us."

Green Song by Edith Sitwell. 1946 View Editions, first U.S. edition, 49 pages. Sitwell was a British critic and poet, known for her lavish costumes, which became the butt of many jokes, and for her wit and support of other writers. The Green Song was published in the middle of her career.
Condition: Jacket acceptable with chips and tears, book in good condition, owner bookplate on front pastedown
"Then, Sun of my life, she went to warm the Dead,
And I must now go sunless in their stead."

The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems by Denis Johnson. 1982 Random House, first paperback edition, 79 pages. Johnson was a novelist and poet who garnered acclaim for his short-story collection Jesus's Son and award-winning novel Tree of Smoke. According to New York Times, "[His] novels and short stories about the fallen — junkies, down-and-out travelers, drifters and violent men in the United States and abroad — emerged in ecstatic, hallucinatory and sometimes minimalist prose." Incognito was his third book of poems.
Condition: VG, some sticker residue on front cover and shelf wear
"He's out on the generous lawn
again, looking like he's made
out of phosphorus."

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run.
Condition: Good, browning and smudges on the cover, wearing away on the tail of spine
"Imagine this man turns to you at midnight
with his needs."

The Land Surveyor's Daughter by Ellen Gilchrist. 1979 Lost Roads, first edition, 46 pages. Gilchrist is a Southern author who won the National Book Award for her story collection Victory Over Japan. Her work is steeped in the Southern tradition, witty and wise. Land Surveyor's Daughter was her first book, a collection of poetry, with a small print run.
Condition: Good, browning and smudges on the cover, wearing away on the tail of spine
"Imagine this man turns to you at midnight
with his needs."

Lustra by Ezra Pound. 1916 Elkin Matthews, first thus, one of about 800 copies printed (previously privately printed edition was 200 copies with nine additional poems) 116 pages. This is a collection of early poems, some of which previously appeared in Poetry and Smart Set. Pound was one of the major figures in the early modernist movement and his influence on poetry reverberates today. According to Donald Hall: "Ezra Pound is the poet who, a thousand times more than any other man, has made modern poetry possible in English."
Condition: Good+, no DJ (not sure if one was issued) bumps to board, owner name on front paste down, tanned end papers.
"Come let us pity those who are better off than
we are."

Necessities of Life by Adrienne Rich. 1966 Knopf, first paperback printing, 79 pages. According to Rich's obituary in the New York Times: "Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century...While some critics called her poetry polemical, she remained celebrated for the unflagging intensity of her vision, and for the constant formal reinvention that kept her verse — often jagged and colloquial, sometimes purposefully shocking, always controlled in tone, diction and pacing — sounding like that of few other poets." Necessities was her fourth book.
Condition: VG
"You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you
old tree of life
old man whose death I wanted
I can't stir you up now."

New Directions in Prose & Poetry. Edited by James Laughlin IV, 1966 New Directions. This was the first publication by the legendary publisher, and includes work by Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Kay Boyle, Elizabeth Bishop, and more. According to Triolet Rare Books: "Gallup states that 513 copies total were printed, of which 204 were in boards."
Condition: Book in good+ condition, boards are bumped, tanning to edges, browning to end papers, spine square and pages clean.

A New Song by Langston Hughes. 1938 International Workers Order, 31 pages. Among the many services provided by the IWO was publishing important civic literature cheaply and affordably. More than 15 poems, including "Let American Be America Again."

Condition: Good. Browning to cover and pages, quite worn and spine with a lot of rubbing away, top staple hole open. Intact and pages clean.

"That Justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we poor are wise:

Her bandage hides two festering sores

That once perhaps were eyes."

The Oblivion Ha-Ha: Sixty Poems by James Tate. 1970 Atlantic-Little Brown, first paperback edition, 92 pages. Tate was a Pulitzer and National Book award-winning poet. According to his obituary in the Guardian: "James Tate . . . was one of the most original and inventive American poets of his era, whose sense of humour and love of the tall story calls to mind an earlier Missouri-born master of the fable, Mark Twain...An iconoclast and an original, Tate won both the Pulitzer prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams award for his Selected Poems of 1991, the National Book award for Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1994), and the Wallace Stevens award (1995)." Oblivion was his second book.
Condition: VG, some browning on back cover
"O the wedding cake and the good cigar!
O the souvenir ashtray!"

Seven Ages by Louise Gluck. 2001 Harper Collins, first edition, 68 pages. Gluck is a Nobel-winning poet and essayist. This was Gluck's ninth volume. According to Kirkus Reviews: "The genius of her poems lies in their ability to sear the summertime onto our souls in such a way that its 'light will give us no peace.'"
Condition: Near fine.
"It came to us late:
perception of beauty, desire for knowledge.
And in the great minds, the two often configured as one."

The Earth-Bound by Janet Lewis. 1946 Wells College Press, one of 300 copies, 47 pages. Lewis was a novelist, librettist, and poet. Theodore Roethke described her work, in Poetry, "[...]is marked by an absolute integrity of spirit and often by the finality in phrasing that can accompany such integrity." Earth-Bound was her third collection.
Condition: Good. Discoloring on back board.
"Sun creeps under the eaves,
And shines on the bare floor
While he forgets the earth."

The Owl Remembers: Gaelic Poems Selected and Edited with Notes by John Mackechnie. 1933, 110 pages. Includes poems from the eighth century to the 20th century. Includes the Gaelic and English translation.
Condition: Jacket in good+ edition, some chips and browning, book in good+, inscription on first page, foxing
"The hand that wrote this, now is gone."

To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton. 1960 Houghton Mifflin, ninth printing, 67 pages. Pulitzer Prize-winner Sexton was a poet who's most well-known poems dealt with mental illness, death, and relationships with her family. She died by suicide at the age of 45. To Bedlam was her first book. According to the New York Times in reviewing a book of collected poems: "The poems in ''To Bedlam and Part Way Back'' (1960) and ''All My Pretty Ones'' (1962) present a savage, almost clinical documentation of madness, illness and pain, and they do so with the authority of a witness blessed with a strong and passionate voice."
Condition: Good. Some wear, owner name on inside cover
"You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness."

Two Poems (hitherto unpublished) by Gertrude Stein. 1948 Banyan Press, first edition, #332 of 415 copies made, 4 pages. Stein was one of the most influential modernists, writers, and hosts of the early 1900s Paris. These poems were published by Stein's longtime partner, Alice Toklas, after Stein's death.

Condition: Good. 3-inch tear on back cover, pencil notes on inside front cover.

"Believe in dolphins."

Viper Jazz by James Tate. 1976 Wesleyan University Press, paperback edition, 79 pages. Tate was a Pulitzer and National Book award-winning poet. According to his obituary in the Guardian: "James Tate . . . was one of the most original and inventive American poets of his era, whose sense of humour and love of the tall story calls to mind an earlier Missouri-born master of the fable, Mark Twain...An iconoclast and an original, Tate won both the Pulitzer prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams award for his Selected Poems of 1991, the National Book award for Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1994), and the Wallace Stevens award (1995)." Viper was his fifth book.
Condition: Good+, wear to cover
"I'm not even thanked
for the pairs of ancient socks
I leave everywhere"