SOME TREES

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. An excellent fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the fine, bright dustwrapper, showing just the merest toning to the spine. A particularly attractive example of the author's first book.

Signed by John Ashberry in blue ink to the front free endpaper. 'Some Trees', Ashbery's first full-length collection was submitted in manuscript for the 1955 Yale Younger Poets competition (an earlier chapbook, 'Turandot, and Other Poems' had been issued by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953). Established in 1918, the Yale Prize for the best debut collection by an American poet is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States, the winning collection published each year by Yale University Press. In 1955, W. H. Auden was in his ninth year as the competition's judge, having taken over the job from Archibald MacLeish in 1947. During his tenure, he had already chosen Adrienne Rich and W. S. Merwin as winners and later chose James Wright and John Hollander. The curious story of Ashbery's success in 1955 is given in the poet's own words in David Kermani's bibliography of the poet: "I had submitted my poems to the Yale University Press according to the requirement of the competition. [...] Frank O'Hara had also submitted a manuscript that year, and both of us had our manuscripts returned by the Press. They'd been screened out from the manuscripts that were sent to Auden.... Later we heard that Auden hadn't liked any of the manuscripts that they'd sent to him and decided not to award the prize that year, and then someone, a mutual friend, possibly Chester Kallman, told Auden [...] that Frank and I both submitted. And he asked us through this friend to send our manuscripts, which we did, and then he chose mine, although I never had felt that he particularly liked my poetry, and his introduction to the book is rather curious, since it doesn't really talk about the poetry. He mentions me as being a kind of successor to Rimbaud, which is very flattering, but at the same time I've always had the feeling that Auden probably never read Rimbaud." It is a beautiful collection, lyrical and formally adventurous, at once suffused with a young poet's debts to older poets (Auden, Bishop, Moore, Stevens, Pasternak, Raymond Roussel), while speaking in Ashbery's own unmistakable voice. Auden's introduction, as well as the volume's attractive design, add to the book's continuing appeal.