God with Revolver
Madras/New York: Hanuman Books, 1990. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher's azure cloth, original handmade paper dust jacket with silver lettering and color photo mounted to upper panel, original top transparent glassine dust jacket.
First edition presentation copy of poet, art critic, and downtown tastemaker Ricard's second major poetry collection, inscribed to late photographer Marcia Resnick. Ricard was a fixture at Warhol's Factory, a regular and influential contributor to Artforum magazine, a prolific poet and painter (frequently text-based), and was revered and feared for his remorseless aperçus: "he was our Catullus, writing elegant and obscene poems of love and hate with brevity and dispatch. But maybe it was best to avoid him?" (Raymond Foye, Brooklyn Rail). Published by Foye and Italian painter Francesco Clemente's Hanuman Books series. Founded in 1986, the small press, whose administrative and editorial functions were housed in the Chelsea Hotel, produced their series of small handmade books in Madras, India, with this the only volume in the series issued in a larger octavo format (with this copy in its rare clothbound state). 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 (Resnick photographed Ricard in 1979), and for her regular feature in the SoHo Weekly News, "Resnick’s Believe-It-or-Not." Ricard has crossed out his printed name on the title page and placed his signature beneath it in red ink, and has further inscribed the book to Resnick on page 13: "for Marcia / This is the way we just walk + walk + walk at the fourth corner" (a possible reference to the poem "14th and 6th," a recitation of locales where the narrator's lover has told him lies). Light staining to bottom corner of upper board; top glassine dust jacket with some creasing. A near fine copy with exceptional provenance. Item #12788
$2,400.00