Personae. The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound. Including Ripostes, Lustra, Homage To Sextus Propertius, H. S. Mauberley

N. Y.: Boni & Liveright, 1927. Second printing (February, 1927) of this selection of all of Pound’s poems to date except the unfinished Cantos. Gallup A27a. Inscribed by Hart Crane to the artist John W. Taylor on the front free endpaper: “To Jack Taylor, Good friend and counselor, Hart Crane, December ‘28”. Crane was a great admirer of Pound, who did not return the favor, however, and, put mildly, did not like Crane’s poetry and refused to publish it in the Little Review. The fact that Crane was only 19 when he submitted his poems to the Little Review in 1919 seems to have rendered him less, rather than more, sensitive to Pound’s dismissive rejection; Crane was delighted to hear from the great poet. By 1928, Pound’s opinion had not changed, whether because he had an aversion, shared by William Carlos Williams, to “homos”, or because Crane’s ambition to write a great long poem threatened his – and Williams’ – own aspirations in that genre. In any case, in early December 1928 Crane departed for London and Paris. Crane would have met John “Jack” Taylor either in NYC, where his future wife, Andrée Ruellan, had had a show at the Weyhe Gallery in 1928, or in Paris, where Taylor and Ruellan lived at the time. Taylor and Ruellan returned to the USA in 1929, married in May, and settled near Woodstock, NY soon afterwards. Given the date and import of Crane’s inscription, it is plausible that Crane carried his copy of Personae to Paris in December 1928, and gave it to Taylor there, as an expression of gratitude for Taylor’s assistance to Crane. It was also in Paris at the same time that Crane met Harry and Caresse Crosby, who, in January 1929, quickly resolved to publish The Bridge under their Black Sun Press imprint. Clive Fisher, Hart Crane: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), pp. 62, 385, 398. Spine lettering dull, head of spine and bottom edges of covers slightly rubbed, otherwise a very good copy. 8vo, frontispiece by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, illustrated, original blue cloth. Spine lettering dull, head of spine and bottom edges of covers slightly rubbed, otherwise a very good copy.