THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS - INSCRIBED BY RON PADGETT TO KENWARD ELMSLIE

First Printing, wrappered issue, one of 1,243 copies. Octavo (23.5cm); beige card wrappers, with titles printed in green blue, orange and red; [12],13-153,[7]pp. This copy bears a full-page inscription on the front endpaper from poet and publisher Ron Padgett, posing as Charles Bukowski, to his close friend, poet Kenward Elmslie (1929-2022): "Happy Birthday Kenward / "and carried them in his hands like apricots" p.17 / love, Charles Bukowski / 1970." The quote is from Bukowski's poem "freedom," in which a drunk man cuts off his own balls with a butcher knife, "carried them in his hands like apricots / and flushed them down the toilet bowl.". Trivial dust-soil to wrappers, gentle sunning to spine, with a faint stain to upper third of same; contents fresh; Very Good+. Bukowski's first full-length book of poetry published by Black Sparrow Press, an important collection, and something of a retrospective of his work to date. Many of these poems dealt with his grief over the death of Jane Cooney Baker, his first wife, to whom he was married briefly in 1952. Krumhansl 32a; Morrow & Cooney 76a.…