KELLY, Robert.
The Common Shore, Books I–V: A Long Poem About America in Time.
SIGNED LIMITED ISSUE — ONE OF 250 NUMBERED HARDCOVER COPIES, THIS NO. 137. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969.
First edition, signed limited issue: one of 250 numbered hardcover copies signed by the poet, this copy number 137 (the limitation number in red). Printed July 1969 in Santa Barbara by Noel Young for Black Sparrow Press; design by Barbara Martin. 176 pp. Original brown cloth with a cream paper spine label printed in black, in the publisher's pictorial dust jacket in cream and copper-orange. Signed in black ink "Robert Kelly" at the colophon. Very good in a very good dust jacket; the brown cloth clean and bright, the spine label crisp and unfaded, the binding tight.
The opening movement of one of Robert Kelly's most ambitious projects — an open-ended serial poem, "a long poem about America in time," as the subtitle has it, that sets the nation's mythological ground on the literal coastline, with "shore" as both edge and meeting place. Drawing on the deep-image and mythological methods Kelly had been developing through the 1960s, the five books move between American history, classical myth, and elemental imagery — earth, fire, and the matter of ocean — to take the measure of a country in time.
Per the colophon, the book was issued in three states: 1,000 copies in paper wrappers; 250 numbered hardcover copies signed by the poet, of which this is one; and 26 lettered copies handbound in boards by Earle Gray, signed and each containing an original illustrated poem in the poet's hand.
SKU TO-2026-004
