Hawkins, Bobbie Louise (Cupidi, Richard))

Almost Everything with: Ephemera

ISBN: 0942986016
New Haven, CT/Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Longriver Books/Coach House Press, 1982. First Softcover Edition. Softcover. Inscribed, signed, placed & dated by Bobbie Louise Hawkins to Richard Cupidi; & with autograph note from Hawkins to Cupidi. “There is a place in Italy, a small town at the side of Lake Como with white buildings and curved red tile roofs; the doors and windows are deepset so that at certain angles they are black shapes in the white. In some places the streets are so narrow that persons walking must press flat against the walls to let a car pass. In these streets unless it is high noon there is a black shade and driving along them there is a consistent flicker of the cross streets that extend like tunnels to the lake. At the far end of the cross streets Lake Como hangs half-way up the sides, a sheet brilliant and blue, suspended in perspective, and above it the paler blue of the sky. This place figures in history. George Sand and Chopin came here, and Liszt with his lady love. Stendhal was a visitor as he could be. And much earlier, high up the mountain, in the very villa we are enroute to there is a cliffside where Michelangelo loved to sketch. The car rises out of the maze of Bellagio to a higher edge of the town climbing the wedge of a hill into sunlight. It is a peninsula. All the edges to be seen from this higher centre touch water. And even from this higher vantage point there is a sense that the lake tilts, its farthest line reaching up. The history of this place is an ambience of feeling. What caused those others to come here catches at oneself. I feel possessed by the charm of it. This is a charming place.”--Bobbie Louise Hawkins, “Bellagio,” pg. 132. Bobbie Louise Hawkins (1930-2018) was an American short story writer, monologist, and poet. Former wife of the legendary Robert Creeley (1926-2005), Hawkins was mired in an intense and often unforgiving poetic crucible that was both tortuous and inspiring. Her first book Own Your Body came out in 1973 to much admiration and critical acclaim, so much so, in fact, that in 1978 Anne Waldman (b. 1945) and Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) hired her to teach fiction workshops and courses on unliterary studies at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute; where she taught until her retirement in 2010. Offered today is the 1982 work, Almost Everything. A collection of short stories, Almost Everything is an experiential kaleidoscope that paints the human condition in vast swaths of vivid, raw, and unequivocally emotion resonant tableaus. From the back cover “Her work offers what much contemporary writing leaves its audience hungering for – a deep feeling for real human experience, for the poignant sense of life in the day to day, the quiet heroism of simple people…Her prose is language operating at its ultimate; an energy an movement, a subtle mounting toward a climax often found only in poetry.” A Hawkins rarity in its rarest contemporary form! From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed friend in the UK who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England for founder Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our item no.s 8217, 8366). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining treasures of Unicorn & Public House, some of which have become the stuff of myth. Signed, inscribed, dated & placed in thin purple ink at first paste-down page by Hawkins to Cupidi: “Dear Richard– / thank you for / being there – / and here – / Bobbie / Brighton / March 24, 1983.” We have also found and retained between first paste-down page and title page, a folded sheet from Public House Bookshop on the verso of which is another handwritten message from Hawkins to Cupidi in thin black ink: “Dear Richard– / thank you so much for the [indiscernible] things–I got a good copy of the Dakota/Ojibwe book–here are a book of mine & a record for you–see you–Bobbie.” Softcover. First softcover edition with reference to a previous hardcover edition at copyright page, presumed first printing though not explicated as such thereon. Book in relatively very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, spotting to page edges, and moderate smudging/scratching/discoloration due to age-toning to front, back covers & spine. Very Fine. [Item #8569]

Price: $100.00