Hail Thee Who Play
Los Angeles, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. Limited First Edition. Hardcover. Signed, Numbered, & with Original Drawing by Michael McClure. “I am not the berry crumbling in my cheek / with rasping seeds that speak / of summer sun, or salmon in the creek / that stretch themselves, in writhing, / on the pebbled beach to catch the gasp of twilight / IN THE CAVERN OF THEIR LIGHT / And feel the sunbeam crash the slime…” (from "HAIL THEE WHO PLAY," pg. 2-3). “HAIL THEE WHO PLAY" is a luxurious large-format, chapbook-length work by the great Beat Generation/San Francisco Renaissance poet, Michael McClure. A strikingly ornate production, one detail point is the sequence of (otherwise unreferenced) watermarks in the book’s delicate, handmade pages. Faint, silhouette-like images—first, of a hand with a four-leaved clover sticking out of the middle finger; second, a mosaic outline of (what appears to be, or at least resembles) Jesus—are pressed within the first few leaves & couched in the lower right-hand margin. To these aesthetic virtues (among numerous others...take your pick!) we add the poem itself, a classic in the McClure canon. “Hail Thee Who Play” is quintessential McClure: declaration-heavy & remorselessly exuberant…a genuine litany of literary exultation. Designed and printed by Saul and Lillian Marks at the Plantin Press, Los Angeles, in August 1968. Numbered & Limited First Edition Hardcover, handbound in decorative boards with ribbed fabric spine; one of 75 copies (#45/75) complete with two-color, playful sketch-drawing by McClure on leaf preceding title page. Signature at colophon in thin, black fountain pen ink reads: "Michael McClure." A wonderful — and extremely early! — 1968 release from John Martin’s celebrated Black Sparrow Press, published only two years after its founding in 1966. Among the rarest specimens of McClure-iana one can possibly procure. In very fine condition—virtually as issued—with only slightest shelf-wear to topmost, bottommost fine-edges; tiny, most certainly erasable pencil marking to bottom right-hand corner of front cover; one faint instance of rubbing near center-middle of back cover. Very Fine. [Item #4857]
Price: $400.00