Eshleman, Clayton

Mexico & North with: Ephemera

Tokyo, Japan: Clayton Eshleman, 1962. First Edition. Softcover in Sewn Binding. Inscribed and Signed by Clayton Eshleman. "My my / but you look fine / today / you tongue / pat your hair to place / light swims / your breasts, curves / your belly's / curve down / your buttocks softening / auburn hairs & / blemishes slight / whip of breeze, slip / fluttering your ankles / inner force drives / river out / & to the / falls, the sea, & you / are of loam & / oil, combed smooth by / scarping weathers, a wild / clapping torrent, a / black goose!" So reads the opening section of "Promthalamion," the 27th poem in this unpaginated collection from the late, great Clayton Eshleman (1935-2021), the award-winning American poet, editor, translator & academician. We were honored to have Eshleman as our friend & mentor, we enjoyed enlightening conversations with him & his beloved wife Caryl at their home near us in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Highly learned, deep, dense & intense, Eshleman's prolific writings exude what TMB Founder and Senior Curator, Arthur S. Nusbaum has termed "Blood-Spattered Erudition." This debut work of Clayton's, "Mexico & North," was published at the beginning of Eshleman's informal apprenticeship to the great Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938) whose poems he was translating, and during his formal apprenticeship to the great Cid Corman (1924-2004) of Origin Magazine fame in Japan. The work thus contains early exemplary poems denoting the collision of both. Included as well are three sheets of ephemera: [1] an order sheet for Eshleman's translations of Vallejo from Wesleyan University Press; [2] an Eshleman-centered promotional sheet (two-sided, with biography and list of the poet's "current repertoire"); [3] a typed, signed letter from Eshleman to his friend Denis, who the volume is signed to. Illustrated by William Paden, an artist who was born in Muncie, Indiana in 1930 and a fellow graduate -- just like our old friend, Clayton -- of Indiana University. The typed and signed letter also includes a handwritten annotation from Eshleman to his friend Denis. The annotation (written along left margin at/across center-middle) reads: "[large asterisk] I can send a recent hook if you / need something to show whoever"). The signature, in thin black pen ink, reads: "Clayton Eshleman." In strong Very Good condition with moderate-to-significant shelf-wear, bumping, rubbing & select bump-creasing to front, back covers, corners, & fine-edges of same; moderate-to-significant age-toning throughout, otherwise clean. All three sheets of ephemera in strong near fine condition with moderate-to-enunciated shelf-wear, bumping & light creasing to fine-edges & corners of recto & verso, otherwise clean. Very Good. [Item #6439]

Price: $60.00