Elizabeth Bishop's Copy
A Local Habitation & A Name
Publication: San Luis Obispo: Solo Press, 1974. First Edition.
Notes: An extraordinary association copy between two Poets Laureate of the United States, both Pulitzer Prize winners.
This copy of Great Plains poet Ted Kooser's third collection of work is inscribed with a drawing to Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979). Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 and was Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Like the poet Wallace Stevens before him, at the time he wrote this book, Kooser worked for an insurance company. Bishop won the Pulitzer in 1956 and was Poet Laureate from 1949–1950.
[14], 79, [3: blank] pages. Introduction by Karl Shapiro.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, with no indication of later printings). Very good or better in the publihser's wrappers (not issued in hardcover). Inscribed on the first blank, "For Elizabeth Bishop from Ted Kooser, 3/24/78." Around the inscription Kooser added a farm landscape with a windmill, billowing clouds, and a few birds.
On one of the final blanks, someone (probably not Bishop) wrote, "6/2/79 (Boston)." I suspect this is one of the books Bishop discarded in early 1979 during a reorganization of her library, which led to nine shopping bags of books leaving the house (see Mildred Nash, Elizabeth Bishop's Library, Massachusetts Review, v. 24, n. 2). It seems that the young Kooser, eager to impress his poet elders sent out similarly inscribed books to other writers. My colleague Lorne Bair sold one inscribed to Ted (Theodore) Enslin with a near-identical sketch.
Item No: #21282
Price: $850