The Bridge. A Poem.; With three photographs by Walker Evans

Paris: The Black Sun Press, 1930. First edition. Evans, Walker. Quarto, original white wrappers, original printed dust jacket, original glassine jacket, untrimmed. Housed in publisher's original silver foil-covered slipcase. Copy number 121 of 200 copies on Holland paper (from a total edition of only 283 copies). This copy has Crane's bookplate, version "C" (K. Lohf, Proof, 3, 1972), on the front endpaper. Illustrated with three superb tissue-guarded photographs by Walker Evans. The second and last book published during Crane's brief and tragic life, The Bridge was written in violent reaction to the pessimism and disillusionment of post-war American and English poetry, specifically Eliot's Waste Land. Crane's goal was to write a visionary poem integrating American history since the Spanish conquest with present-day realities of business, the marvels of architecture and engineering, and the American spirit of democratic optimism, all held together by one dominant symbol -- the Brooklyn Bridge. His poetic sensibility, akin to the revolutionary aesthetic begun by Walt Whitman and developed by such poets as William Carlos Williams and later Robert Lowell, is at its best in such lyrics as "The Harbor Dawn" and "The River." "Crane finds in America a principle of unity and absolute faith and. in the Brooklyn Bridge, an image of man's anonymous creative power unifying past and present" (Hart, 192). . Connolly, The Modern Movement, 62. Hart Crane's engraved bookplate on inside of front wrapper. Only some darkening and wear to the fragile glassine along the spine; fragile paper spine starting to split, but sound. Some rubbing to edges of the silver-foil publisher's slipcase. Interior fine. Evidenced by the presence of his bookplate in its earliest state, this was Crane's own copy (or one of his copies) of his masterpiece, a cornerstone of modern American poetry, in extremely good condition. [Schwartz & Schweik A 2].