THREE POEMS

360 x 285 mm. (14 x 11 1/4"). [8] leaves of text. Unbound, as issued, in original blue cloth box by Sarah Provoncha. WITH EIGHT ETCHINGS by Holly Brown. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR on the limitation page. SIGNED BY THE ILLUSTRATOR on all etchings. With publisher's announcement sheet laid in. As new. This oversized artist's book production is a poetic, visual, and typographic collaboration with especially happy results. Charles Simic (1938-2023), winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and U.S. Poet Laureate for 2007-08, wrote moving, surrealistic poetry based on his own experiences, particularly his traumatic childhood in what was then Yugoslavia. The three poems included here--"Mirrors at 4 A.M.," "A Book Full of Pictures," and "Late Train"--take mundane experiences and imbue them with a sense of magical unreality, creating a surreal world of lush imagery through which winds a miasma of emotion. The sensual illustrations by printmaker Holly Brown perfectly reflect the dreamlike quality of the text: recognizable forms emerge from a hazy background, blurring the line between the known and unknown. Brown established Clockworks Press while still a student, and the present work was her Honors Thesis project at Syracuse University. The production is of an exceptionally high quality, with the text printed in Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante type by Michael and Katherine Russem of the Kat Ran Press. This copy is from the collection of Laure-Anne Bosselaar (b. 1943) and her husband Kurt Brown (1944-2013). Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, and editor who has published numerous works of poetry in multiple languages, including five collections of her own works. She has received various prizes and recognitions (Pushcart, Isabella Gardner, Breadloaf) and was named Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara in 2019. Sometimes publishing jointly with Bosselaar, Brown was also a prolific poet and editor of anthologies, as well as the founder and first director of the Aspen Writer's Conference, playing a pivotal role in shaping its early vision and establishing Aspen as a literary center. It was through the Aspen Writer's Conference that Bosselaar and Brown became friends with Simic, when Brown invited Simic to speak at the conference in the early 1990s. Bosselaar, reminiscing on a friendship of over two decades, wrote that "Charlie . . . and Kurt had a great friendship, and shared a common love for wine & poetry--so, often, the Simics would come to our house, and we’d have a 'good bottle' or two around a dinner I'd cook for them.".