OLSON, Charles; Corrado CAGLI (illustrator). Y & X. [Paris:] Black Sun Press, Caresse Crosby. 1948.
Slim 4to. Fold out sheet, retaining the original glassine dust wrapper; pp. [12], with five poems and five monochrome illustrations; wrapper with a few small chips and tears to spine, else near fine.
First edition, no. 9 of 100 collector’s copies printed on grey tweedweave from a total edition of 500, of Charles Olson’s first book of verse, handsomely illustrated by the Italian painter Corrado Cagli.
Charles Olson, a second-generation American modernist poet, is regarded as a pivotal figure in American poetry for his role in the transition from modernism to postmodernism. He also served as an important bridge between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the subsequent generation of New American poets.
Olson’s first published collection, Y & X, contains five poems. In 1950, Black Sun Press issued a second, photo-offset edition at approximately half the original size, stapled. His second poetry collection, In Cold Hell, in Thicket, followed in 1953.
The Black Sun Press was an English-language publishing house based in Paris, founded in 1927 by the American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby. Renowned for its handset typography and exquisite design, the press published early works by writers including Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Crane, D. H. Lawrence, and Hemingway.
Minkoff A-52.
SKU: 2121312