The Lice
New York: Atheneum, 1967.
First edition. Inscribed by Merwin to former owner, signed and dated 2011. [x], 236 [4] pp. Original gray cloth with silver spine lettering. Near Fine with a bit of rubbing to spine lettering, slight pilling to cloth, former owner's name on front free endpaper, in Very Good+ spine-sunned, unclipped dust jacket, worn at tips. An important work by the Pulitzer-winning poet rooted in personal experience, uncommon signed. Jarold Ramsay writes of the book in a review, "What makes The Lice special in a decade of writing that will be remembered for its apocalyptic obsessions is an eerie sense of bearing witness to a world already in mid-apocalypse. These are not portentous poems so much as notations on the experience that it is all but over and done with, that we are merely 'the echo of the future,' and 'tomorrow belongs to no one.'"
Price: $900.00