Bly, Robert; Duffy, William; Wright, James

The Lion's Tail and Eyes

Madison, MN: The Sixties Press, 1962. First Printing. Softcover in Dust Jacket. "We tend to describe all ventures in poetry as experiments in form. The poems in this book are not experiments in form, but experiments in content. They are evocations of single moments of life. There is a part of the personality which speaks of things that are dead- of Achilles, long-dead relatives, nostalgia for the 'old days'; these poems, however, come from the part of the personality which is nourished by notice of things that are growing. Some of the poems are attempts to describe paths toward solitude. Some are sprouts that the imagination of the reader can carry about with him, and grow himself. The poems do not aim at generalization such as 'man's life is inevitably political', but rather attempt to bring something fresh into the poem without destroying that living thing. In all of the poems, there is an effort to resist the Puritan insistence on being busy, the need to think of everything in terms of work. Most discussions of poetry today concern various metrics; that is, the husks of poetry. But the life of a poem does not depend on its metric, but on the life of the man. A poem grows from a man like an ear, or a hand." (front flap) A landmark vintage collection of poems by three Great American Poets: Robert (Elwood) Bly (1926-2021), founding leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement (notice the exclusively masculine references in the quote above); William Duffy, Bly's (biographically elusive) friend & colleague in poetry & publishing; & James (Arlington) Wright (1927-1980), the acclaimed poet of the Deep Image School who was also a close friend & colleague of Bly. With a short note by Bly preceding the poems. Softcover in sewn binding with clipped illustrated dust jacket over-wrapping blank covers & spine, a production of Bly-&-Co.'s Sixties Press imprint, named after their fabled journal of that decade (see also our item No. 3344). We presume this is a first-&-only softcover printing, we have seen references to a limitation of 1000 copies & of a hardcover edition, though no such information is provided at copyright page. From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), a renowned American author, film critic, poet, editor & academician here at the University of Michigan. An excellent Bly-&-Co. collectible in its scarce, penultimately rarest contemporary form. Book in relatively quite fine condition with only light rubbing, browning, faint scratching & occasional spotting to front, back covers & spine; mild wear & some tiny bumps, creases at/from edges & corners of same. Interior very fine with only a touch of browning to page leaves. Dust jacket (again relatively) near-fine with mild-to-moderate rubbing, browning & faint scratching to front, back covers, spine & flaps; light wear & some tiny bumps, creases at/from edges & corners of same; tiny chips at upper spine-edges, corners with minimal loss of paper. Fine / Near Fine. [Item #7007]

Price: $50.00