Description
6For sale is a Very Rare paperback edition, first printing of The Secret Meaning of Things by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. First Edition unstated 1968 New Directions. First Printing with no subsequent printing or date after 1968, and a $1.00 rear cover price. Library of Congress number, and no ISBN number inside and out.
The exterior of this trade paperback edition is in Very Good condition, with clean, illustrated covers with no creases, clean page blocks, mild surface wear, strong title on a square spine, a tight binding with no spine cracks, rubbed spine ends, moderate edge wear and rounded corners. The interior of the book is in Very Good condition with a small price sticker on the first free end paper and no other marks, inscriptions, or signs of ownership. The inside covers and the interior pages are clean and lightly toned.
The Secret Meaning of Things includes six long poems that show a progressive continuity and clarity of perception that apprehends both the hard reality and luminous irreality in everyday phenomena. In “Assassination Raga”––on the death of Robert Kennedy––the glass through which the poet sees darkly is the television screen; the poem was first read on the night of RFK’s funeral at a mass memorial in San Francisco. “Bickford’s Buddha” is a meditation on “Observation Fever” in Harvard Square, while “All Too Clearly” finds a “touch of old surrealism/at a stoplight in La Jolla.” “Through the Looking Glass” begins with an actual flight aboard a commercial airliner and progresses through LSD vision to a final flash of the Dance of Shiva, which in turn opens out into the worldview of “After the Cries of Birds.” “Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow” comes out of Ferlinghetti’s travels to Moscow and across the steppes in the winter of 1967.
Ships promptly in a secure mailer with book wrapped in both craft paper and bubble wrap.
