TEN POEMS BY RITA DOVE / Signed 1st Edition 1977

  
TEN POEMS BY RITA DOVE. Rare limited first edition of the first poetry collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, warmly inscribed to mentor and fellow poet Stanley Plumly. Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue.

TEN POEMS was published in the year Dove completed her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied under Plumly, establishing a relationship of lasting mutual respect. Plumly wrote of their first meeting: What struck me immediately was how sophisticated this twenty-two-year-old was: not in any affected, superficial way but sophisticated in the degree of confidence and purpose she projected. She was clearly, already, a person of depth and gravity. The long list of Dove's subsequent accomplishments and honors includes a Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NAACP Image Award, the American Academy of Poets's Wallace Stevens Award, and 29 honorary doctorates; she is the only poet to have ever received both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. A warm and significant American literary association of this important debut.

Lisbon, Iowa: The Penumbra Press, 1977. 7.25'' x 7.25''. Laid into original illustrated manila envelope. The Manila Series: Number Four. Hand-colored illustration based on "the author's painted fingernails" across title page and facing page.

Edition of "approximately" 200 copies printed by hand on Frankfurt Creme paper; this copy no. Inscribed in brown ink by Dove below table of contents: For Hope + Stanley - With affection and Thanks...

Your friendship and encouragement was well appreciated in this journey from ditto sheet to Frankfurt Creme! Wrappers with a few tiny pinholes to top corner, light wear, small spot of soil to spine. Manila envelope opened on three sides, moderate wear. Type Punch Matrix is a rare book firm founded by Rebecca Romney and Brian Cassidy. Between them, they bring over 30 years of experience in the antiquarian book trade.

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