Babel
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1978. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher's black cloth, spine gilt, upper board blindstamped, original photo-illustrated dust jacket.
Signed first edition of Patti Smith's collection of poems and song lyrics. "[Smith's] sensibility is one that borrows and embraces Gnostic-tinged, heterodoxical ideas and feelings that have appeared in the cosmogony of William Blake, the ritualism and paranoia of Baudelaire, the illuminations of Rimbaud, the menacing sexual fantasies of Lautréamont, Bataille and Genet....it is hard to separate Smith's poetry and recordings from her public persona, for she has been producing – as Susan Sontag has said of Artaud – not so much a literary and musical body of work as a 'self'" (New York Times). Illustrated with numerous black-and-white photos, drawings and reproductions by Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lynn Goldsmith and others. Signed by Smith to the half-title, and with the initials "r.e.f.m." for Radio Ethiopia Field Marshall, her self-designated title, so named after her 1976 album Radio Ethiopia. Though it bears no ownership markings, the volume is from the collection of photographer Marcia Resnick. Born in Brooklyn, Resnick is best known for chronicling the downtown scene of the 1970s and 80s in real time, taking portraits of musicians, artists, filmmakers, and writers such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Belushi, Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol, and Susan Sontag, and for her regular feature in the SoHo Weekly News, "Resnick’s Believe-It-or-Not." Light rubbing to spine-ends; unclipped dust jacket with light chipping and creasing to spine-ends and ends of flap-folds, large closed tear to lower panel, and some rubbing and edgewear. An about very good copy, most desirable signed. Item #12757
$1,500.00