THE ARCTIC OX

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Offsetting to free endpapers. In the slightly dusty wrapper, rubbed and nicked to extremities, with three half-centimetre closed tears to upper edges. The lettering to the spine a little rubbed. Not price-clipped (16s net to the front flap).

'The Arctic Ox', published in the UK alone, contains most of the poems from the US collection, 'O To Be A Dragon', published five years earlier, with ten additional poems. Donald Hall notes of the well-known title poem that "[i]ts inspiration came from an article published in 1958 in the Atlantic Monthly, by John J. Teal, Jr., [...] who later asked Miss Moore to visit his farm in Vermont. The animal instantly took her fancy. One thing Miss Moore likes about the arctic ox (or goat) is that you need not kill it to have its wool." (Donald Allen, 'Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal', New York, 1970; Abbott A23).