Concrete Poetry: A World View
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1968. 1st Edition. Quarto, publisher's denim cloth, spine and upper board stamped in white, orange endpapers, original illustrated dust jacket in duplicate.
First edition of poet and critic Mary Ellen Solt’s landmark anthology of concrete poetry, one of the first serious surveys of the movement in the US. Solt gathered over one hundred poems and texts, tracing the form through typewriter, kinetic, tape-recorder, and object poems. She tracks the evolution from sonnet through concrete art; takes in the theories of Max Bill; considers literary innovations by Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Joyce, Pound, and cummings; and looks at artists such as Webern, Calder, Eisenstein, and more. Solt also includes manifestos by Gomringer, the Noigandres group, Öyvind Fahlström, Max Bense, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Finlay, Jonathan Williams, and others. The jacket reproduces two of Solt’s own concrete poems. Illustrated throughout in black-and-white, with some poems in color, and one tipped in folding plate. Published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback. This copy has two unclipped examples of the dust jacket, each with some chipping, edgewear, and a few small closed tears, with the upper flap of one dust jacket detached but present. Very good. Quite scarce in this hardcover issue. Item #13697
$500.00