THE WELLFLEET WHALE

KUNITZ, STANLEY

Published by Sheep Meadow Press, New York, 1983

About this Item

237 x 150 mm. (9 1/4 x 6"). 4 p.l., 17, [1] pp., [3] pp. Publisher's tan buckram, front cover with pictorial panel. With a photograph of a beached whale by the author. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the title page. Small tear to corner of rear flyleaf, otherwise flawless. This is a pleasing signed small press edition of Stanley Kunitz's verses. The writer and professor Kunitz (1905-2006) was U.S. Poet Laureate from 2000-01 and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1974-76, among many other honors. His intellectual, challenging poems often deal with mortality; the Poetry Foundation tells us that "one of Kunitz's most pervasive themes concerns the simultaneity of life and death." This theme permeates the present work, with the title poem being inspired by a beached, dying whale that Kunitz had witnessed at Cape Cod. He wrote of the whale that "you have become like us, / disgraced and mortal." The Sheep Meadow Press was founded as a nonprofit in 1977 with a focus on poetry, and published more than 250 works by a wide array of writers, often those not receiving much attention from commercial publishers.

Seller Inventory # ST20338-008

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE WELLFLEET WHALE
• Publisher: Sheep Meadow Press, New York
• Publication Date: 1983
• Edition: Second Printing.
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry