INTO THE DAY

First edition, first printing. Printed on laid paper by the Saffron Press, Saffron Walden in an edition of 500 copies. This copy with the author's printed compliments slip ("Hommage de l'auteur") loosley laid in. Original blue textured card wraps lettered black to the spine. Black discs (suns) to front and rear covers, title page and rear colophon, with yellow discs to two consecutive pages mid-sequence. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the spine just a touch faded, the front panel with one small faint mark. The contents are clean and bright and without previous owners' stamps or inscriptions. Scarce.

'Into the Day', privately printed for the poet in Cambridge, was distributed by Prynne's friend and fellow poet Andrew Crozier's Ferry Press (who had published Prynne's earlier 'Aristeas' (1968) and 'Brass' (1971)). In his peerless study of Prynne's writings, Kevin Nolan contrasts "the almost Pindaric equity" of this diurnal sequence with "the asperities" of 'Brass', the later volume "commencing a reluctant valediction to that tradition of Orphic tageleid (constituting not merely the oldest form of European song, but also [...] the ur-form of all song)." Upon publication, the American poet George Oppen wrote to Prynne that he could "scarcely credit the existence of the last poem … its incredible beauty", while the English poet Douglas Oliver wrote of the sequence's quality of patience, noting "that patience is beautiful". (Kevin Nolan, 'Capital Calves: Undertaking an Overview', Jacket 24, November 2003).