First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs, 1971-74 (Association Copy with Postcard Letter)

New York: Full Court Press, 1975. A near fine copy in gray cloth boards, with minor rubbing to typographic jacket, thus close to near fine. Postcard with facsimile manuscript poem printed to recto (Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit), with SIGNED handwritten letter to verso, dated Sept. 18, 1976.. First Edition. Slim octavo. A collection of poem-songs from Ginsberg, first inspired by a jam session with Bob Dylan in 1971. Folkways would produce an LP of the songs in 1981, as recorded by Harry Smith. This copy of the hardcover trade issue is accompanied by a postcard letter from Ginsberg to the Scottish-born balladeer Helen Adam—regarded as the "bardic matriarch" of the Beats—presenting the book to her, with a number of comments on his singings of Blake.