Quantities. Poems
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1962. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher’s stiff illustrated paper wraps.
Inscribed first edition of prize-winning poet, translator, essayist, and critic Richard Howard’s debut collection. Howard was a prolific translator of French literature, including works by Baudelaire, Stendhal, and Roland Barthes. Primarily a poet, he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, received the American Book Award, PEN Translation Medal, and France's Ordre National du Mérite, all while serving as a longtime poetry editor for the Paris Review. Showcasing his early experiments with form and language that laid the groundwork for the dramatic monologues that would define his later work, Quantities comprises verses he wrote in his twenties while working as a lexicographer, palpably influenced by his friend W.H. Auden. Inscribed to half-title (picking up from printed title): "[Quantities] of affection / with these first, late fruits / Richard for Barbara / March 24 1964." Issued simultaneously in hardcover and paperback, as here. Light soiling and staining to wraps. Very good. Item #9916
$250.00