Valley-Fox, Anne

How Shadows are Bundled with: Ephemera

ISBN: 9780826347817
Alberqueque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. First Printing. Hardcover. Signed by Anne Valley-Fox to Thomas Rain Crowe, the co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. “Summer evenings the writer breaks from the bar to / slurred melon pastels. Tonight a snowstorm has soundlessly / changed the world. A pickup truck leaving the lot turns / too wide and mounts the sidewalk, missing the lone / pedestrian by a breath. The walker walks on, carrying / snow on his shoulders. A coward summons failure before / the finish…and what of his protagonist? Character / determines fate, yet it the realm of behavior, substitutes / are sometimes accepted—a tigress held in captivity nurses / a piglet…the third martini delivers you over the falls / in a barrel…a breakthrough may still be possible” (from “Three Martinis,” p. 3). Offered here is How Shadows Are Bundled by Anne Valley-Fox, a poet affiliated with the Second San Francisco Renaissance of the mid-to-late 1970s, despite not living in North Beach, the center of the Renaissance action. “Her work,” as Thomas Rain Crowe, the co-authorial founder (with Neeli Cherkovski) of the Second San Francisco Renaissance writes in Starting from San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (Item No. 3071), “became apparent to us Beatitude editors early on, and we were all attracted to it and published it in the magazine. Harold Graves, the publisher of a small press in North Beach named Golden Mountain who had published small first books by Luke Breit and Jeanne Sirotkin, was working on a book of Anne’s at the time and he was her champion. I met her through Harold, and we struck up a friendship. Anne was maybe the most interestingly crafted poet of our San Francisco cadre of younger poets with an astounding presence and beauty. I didn’t know any straight male in San Francisco that wasn’t in love with her. She wasn’t part of the inner circle of the Beatitude group, but she was part of many readings and events we organized during those years and her work appeared in more than one issue of the magazine” (The Thomas Rain Crowe Archive Catalog, p. 81). The work here, — including the above-quoted, inaugural poem to this collection — works in support of the praise given her by Thomas. For readers of American poetry looking for prolific-and-underappreciated women poets of this great nation, We at TMB heartily suggest picking up a volume by Anne Valley-Fox. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book, Starting from San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (Item No. 3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (Item No. 1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Also, we have found & have retained a printed sheet of email correspondence sent to AVF by Crowe, her old-time literary compadre. Even further enriching this lot is the fact that this copy is additionally signed by AVF to Crowe. Fox’s signature, alternately in blue and black pen ink, reads: “For Thomas (TRC) — / Long — but not lost! — / friend! Wt. great good / wishes! / Anne Valley-Fox / June 11, 2010.” Hardcover in illustrated boards: First Edition, though not explicated as such on copyright page; First Printing, as indicated by number sequence thereon. In very fine condition with only slightest shelf-wear, light bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge, otherwise, pristine. Very Fine. [Item #7367]

Price: $30.00