The Bridge. A Poem. With Three Photographs by Walker Evans

Paris: Black Sun Press, 1930. First edition. One of 50 copies printed on Japanese Vellum and signed by Crane. Schwartz & Schweik A2. Minkoff A32. Connolly 100, 64. One of the seminal American poems of the Twentieth Century, about which Harold Bloom has noted: "what is imperishable in The Bridge is not its lyric mourning, but its astonishing transformation of the sublime ode into an American epic, uneven certainly but beyond The Waste Land in aspiration and accomplishment." - introduction to The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (N. Y.: Liveright, 2000). In 1928, Crane and Evans met for the first time under Brooklyn Bridge, "Evans with his vest-pocket camera and Crane with his notebook. They recognized each other as kindred spirits and fell naturally into conversation. Crane was fascinated by photography. . . ." After first considering a reproduction of Joseph Stella's cubist painting of the Brooklyn Bridge to illustrate his poem, Crane decided that he "wanted to use three of Evans' photographs of the bridge as separate plates within the text." Evans's photographs were published for the first time in The Bridge, and since then have become identified not only with Crane's poem, but with the Brooklyn Bridge itself, in the artistic and literary imagination. - Belinda Rathbone, Walker Evans. A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), pp. 41-52. Base of spine slightly worn, glassine chipped, otherwise a fine copy of the deluxe issue, in the original slipcase that is rubbed along the edges, and splitting along the bottom and top edges, with a small inch-long piece missing from the tip of the bottom edge of the slipcase.. 4to, original white printed wrappers, original glassine cover and gilt paper covered slipcase. Base of spine slightly worn, glassine chipped, otherwise a fine copy of the deluxe issue, in the original slipcase that is rubbed along the edges, and splitting along the bottom and top edges, with a small inch-long piece missing from the tip of the bottom edge of the slipcase.