POEMS: North & South - A Cold Spring

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company / The Riverside Press, 1955. First printing. Near fine in near fine jacket.. First edition of Bishop's second poetry collection, whose publication brought her great acclaim and crowned her several previous awards and honors with the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Elizabeth Bishop's contemporary admirers were strikingly given to praising her for what she did not do, her poems for what they did not have: "no creditable mannerisms" and "not didactic," Marianne Moore wrote approvingly; they "strike no attitudes" and carry "not an ounce of superfluous emotional weight," Louise Bogan agreed; even Randall Jarrell singled out her "restraint." What remains, when all possible errors have been avoided? Lucidity, precision, beauty, mastery of form, great intelligence and perception. 8.5'' x 5.5''. Original white-lettered blue cloth. In original price-clipped blue and white dust jacket by Loren MacIver. viii, 95, [1] pages. Minor wear to boards, offsetting to endpapers. Jacket lightly edgeworn, spine toned.