FROST, Robert; Louis Untermeyer [Editor].
Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930.
$2,000.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152659
+$500
Autograph Riddle-Poem in the Hand of Robert Frost; In a Copy of Modern American and British Poetry Inscribed by Editor Louis Untermeyer
An extraordinary copy of Louis Untermeyer's celebrated combined poetry anthology, containing an original autograph riddle-poem in the hand of Robert Frost. The three-line poem, titled by Frost "My What-is-it" and signed with his initials "R.F.," is written on pale blue paper and mounted vertically on the front pastedown. It reads, "He has dust in his eye, a fan for a wing, / An elegant leg with which he can sing, / And a mouth full of dyestuff instead of a sting." The little riddle describes a grasshopper, and Frost would publish a revised version the following year as "One Guess" in his 1936 collection A Further Range, altering the second line to begin "A leg akimbo." Frost delighted in the puzzle, and in 1935 he sent a version of it to a schoolteacher to try on her pupils. The book is additionally inscribed by its editor on the front free endpaper, "for Belle Nixon This copy of a too-bulky anthology which has the virtue of having an original puzzle (about a grasshopper) pasted in in the handwriting of Robert Frost, with happy memories of a gay evening at Fitchburg. Louis Untermeyer, April 1939." Octavo, publisher's cloth. In very good condition with sunning to the spine, moderate scattered soiling, and toning to the textblock.
Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry, edited by the poet, critic, and anthologist Louis Untermeyer, was among the most widely used and influential poetry anthologies of the twentieth century, introducing generations of students to the modern poets. Untermeyer was a tireless champion of new verse and a close friend of many of the poets he collected, Robert Frost foremost among them, and the two carried on one of the great literary friendships and correspondences of the era. Robert Frost, four times awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is among the most beloved of all American poets, celebrated for The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Mending Wall. His playful riddle-poems, of which this is a charming example, reflect the wit and love of country things that run throughout his work.
Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry.
$2,000.00
In Stock