BORREGAARD, Ebbe. [Letters to Sprach]

[29] leaves, printed rectos only, including brown endleaves with reproduced holograph text and illustrations. 4to. Side-stapled in stiff card wraps. Near fine, with light wear at corners. A collection of thirteen "Dear Sprach" letters by poet Ebbe Borregaard, reportedly self-published in an edition of "no more than 20 copies"; reflections on poets and the poetic act; originally a paean to but here reframed as a somewhat bitter rebuttal of Jack Spicer and his circle, of which Borregaard had been a close associate. In 1959, Borregaard and Spicer published under the joint pseudonym Sagen a letter, “Dear Sprach,” in the first issue of Spicer's little mag, J. The following year, Borregaard and his wife Joy founded Borregaard’s Museum and Art Gallery, a venue showcasing the work of the Spicer circle. However, Borregaard had a public falling out with Robert Duncan in 1961 over the "future and function" of the gallery, during the course of which Spicer took Duncan's side and harshly derided Borregaard in a letter (Ellingham & Killian, Poet Be Like God, pp. 193-194). Borregaard was apparently deeply stung by the incident, and his sense of betrayal shines clear in the preface here, where he refers to the "final bittersweet rewrite" of these letters and remarks of his associates: "It was a final insult, one directly aimed at this ms., that placed me square within their circle, and defeated my tenderest self regard. I withdrew frm them as completely as my nature allowed, and unwillingly from the art." A scarce work from a rather overlooked figure in the San Francisco Renaissance. OCLC locates six institutional holdings.