[Item #4857] Hail Thee Who Play. Michael McClure.
Hail Thee Who Play
Hail Thee Who Play
Hail Thee Who Play
Hail Thee Who Play
Hail Thee Who Play

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