Allen Ginsberg's Copy
ALLEN, Donald M. (editor). The New American Poetry. 1945-1960. New York: Grove Press Inc., [and] London: Evergreen Books Ltd. 1960.
8vo. Publisher's black cloth, spine and upper board lettered in gilt; in the original illustrated dust wrapper priced $5.95 to the front flap; top edge blue, mustard endpapers; pp. xxiv, 454, [2]; slight toning to wrapper, with a few nicks and light rubbing to extremities; signed without dedication by Donald Allen to the title page, with laid in contract signed by the editor and Allen Ginsberg; internally bright and clean, a fine copy in very good wrapper.
Allen Ginsberg’s copy of Donald M. Allen’s anthology of post-war American poetry, signed by the editor and with Ginsberg’s contract letter laid in, signed by both; the book that introduced Black Mountain, New York School, and Beat poets to an international audience, the anthology was a touchstone and talisman for J. H. Prynne and Andrew Crozier, among others.
Few anthologies are significant books in their own right, and even fewer remain useful and in print sixty-five years after first publication. Donald Allen’s anthology of post-war American poetry is of that select group. Apart from its scope, and inclusion of poets and poems outside the mainstream (many remain outside), available solely in scarce chapbooks, or unpublished, it is the intelligence informing the Allen’s selections, and the juxtapositions between them, that stands out.
As well as introducing a generation of American readers to an extraordinary array of poets, the volume famously brought those poets to the attention of younger writers abroad, notably in England, and specifically in Cambridge, where the book introduced J. H. Prynne, Andrew Crozier and others to figures including Charles Olson (who opens the volume), Ed Dorn, and Robert Creeley, the New York School poets O’Hara, Ashbery and Koch – and not least the Beats. This is Allen Ginsberg’s copy and includes a two-page mimeographed contract, dated September 24, 1958, between Ginsberg and Donald Allen regarding the former’s contribution to the anthology. Signed by both, the contract details royalty terms and Allen's broadly outlined objectives for the collection.
SKU: 2120045