Relations Selected Poems 1950-1985

Booth, Philip

ISBN 10: 0670809438 / ISBN 13: 9780670809431

Published by Viking Penguin Inc, New York, 1986

About this Item

Inscribed to Annie Dillard. 8vo (23.5 cm); black boards with spine wrapped in brown cloth, titles stamped in silver gilt on spine; photo-illustrated dust jacket; 259pp. Inscription (and previous bookseller's annotation) on ffep, bookplate on half-title "Ex Libris Annie Dillard," sharp edges and corners, tight spine, foxing along top edge, a touch of foxing on endpapers, mild shelf wear on bottom edge of boards. Dust jackets crisp but yellowed around the extremities, wear and marks on covers, commensurate minor chips and closed tears on edges. Inscribed on ffep to fellow writer and poet Annie Dillard on Bastille day 1988.

Seller Inventory # 305

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Relations Selected Poems 1950-1985
• Publisher: Viking Penguin Inc, New York
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670809438
• ISBN 13: 9780670809431
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First edition.
• Condition: Very Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Signed
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

Poems consider nature, religion, death, the past, marriage, childhood, time, language, knowledge, and dreams

From Library Journal

There is a gratifying wholeness of subject and style in this generous sampling from four decades of Booth's poetry. Again and again he evokes the granite-hard world of the Maine coast, the home of "fish and seal,/ crab and beach-pea," forever threatened by a sea that mocks the calculations of "compass, chart, and log." Beyond the coast lie meadows of "aster and chicory, sumac/ poplar and apple." Always sensitive to weather and the particularity of physical objects, Booth shows how this real world becomes his dream world. The sea becomes the "floodtide/ under my skull." Booth is master of the short line: life and art are pared down to the utterly powerful essentials: "beads of rain/ hang cold/ on the lilac." A major book by a major American writer; highly recommended.Daniel L. Guillory, English Dept., Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.