Snyder, Gary

Broadside: Icy Mountains Constantly Walking (For Seamus Heany)

Washington, DC: Counterpoint Press, 1999. First Printing. Single Sheet. Signed by Gary Snyder. “Work took me to Ireland / a twelve-hour flight. / The river Liffy [sic] / ale in a bar, / So many stories / of passions and wars — / A hilltop stone tomb / with the wind across the door. / Peat swamps go by: / people of the ice age. / Endless fields and farms / the last two thousand years. / I read my poems in Galway, / just the chirp of a bug / And flew home thinking / of literature and time. / The serried rows of books / in the Long Hall at Trinity / The ranks of stony ranges / above the ice of Greenland” (“Icy Mountains Constantly Walking, for Seamus Heaney” by Gary Snyder). A broadside (measuring appx. 10” x 7"; printed landscape-format) by Gary Snyder (b. 1930), the great Beat-&-Beyond poet affiliated with both the San Francisco Renaissance, and the various ecological modernism[s] of the mid-to-late 20th century. 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. Promotional broadside on single sheet: the first-&-only printing of this elusive Snyder collectible. For this curation, We at TMB will add to our standard curatorial language (regarding edition and printing) the following: while the broadside has no formal colophon, it does have a printing notation near/along its bottommost fine-edge. This notation, in full, reads: “Poem copyright Gary Snyder, 1999. Photograph of the author by Allen Ginsberg, copyright 1999. Published to celebrate the / publication of The Gary Snyder Reader, June 1999. Designed by David Bullen.” This, of course enables us to date the publication of this desirable piece of Gary Snyder ephemera — which should be equally alluring to fans of Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet-&-playwright, to whom the poem is dedicated. Further endowing this lot is the presence of Gary’s signature near the broadside’s bottommost fine-edge. The poet’s signature, in thin, brown, calligraphy pen ink, reads: “Gary Snyder.” In very fine condition with only minute shelf-wear & microscopic exhibits of age-toning to fine-edges & corners of recto & verso sides; otherwise, pristine. Very Fine. [Item #7478]

Price: $275.00