A DARK OCTAVE by WALDROP, Rosmarie

[Durham, CT]: Burning Deck, 1967. 8vo. Signed by author. First edition. Wraps. Mild rubbing, slight wear at edges. Near fine. One of one hundred numbered copies, this is number 47. Poet, translator, and editor Rosemarie Waldrop has been a forceful presence in American and international poetry for over forty years. She received a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1966. While in Ann Arbor, Waldrop married poet and translator Keith Waldrop. The title poem, "A Dark Octave," introduces a musical metaphor that willreappear throughout her work. The same poem also interrogates the foundation of perceptual experience and its links to personal identity." Setting Type" is a meditation, triggered by the daily labors of running a small press, on the physical properties of language. "For John Cage Perchance," is a homage to the avant-garde composer and writer. Waldrop is linked to preceding generations of avant-garde writers, the Surrealists and, even more centrally, the Dadaists. Like these earlier writers, Waldrop engages in a literary practice predicated on a commitment to the materiality of language as a medium. Her own work in concrete and visual poetry in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her frequent use of collage techniques and procedural devices throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and her many years of hand-setting type for Burning Deck books and chapbooks, all testify to an ongoing exploration of the material word. Waldrop has influenced several generations of writers as a long-time teacher for most of her career at Wesleyan. Her work is increasingly discussed in the context of the contemporary avant-garde and also in the context of feminist writing, where her name is often linked to those of Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Barbara Guest, Leslie Scalapino, and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Diane Wakoski has said, "Rosmarie Waldrop writes the poetry of everyday life and asks her reader to look beyond it, not by dazzling you withspectacular images or fancy metaphors but by simply quietly invoking you to look, listen, reflect."OCLC shows more than ten percent of this small edition behind institutional walls. An uncommon title from one of our most prominent poets and presses, especially signed.