White Shroud Poems 1980-1985

New York: Harper & Row, 1987 First paperback edition ("First Perennial Library edition"), first printing. Presentation copy, signed, lengthily inscribed, and dated "7/12/88" by Allen Ginsberg in black pen to friend and fellow Naropa Institute teacher Susan Edwards on the title page. With an original drawing by Ginsberg on the facing page of a sunflower and serpent, with "AH" in the center of the head of the flower, and the Star of David. Publisher's cream wrappers, with illustration by Harry Smith to front wrapper, lettered in red. Fine, with a hint of wear to head of spine. Overall, a wonderful presentation copy. The title poem of this collection is a thematic follow up to "Kaddish," Ginsberg's elegy for his mother, Naomi. In "White Shroud," Ginsberg dreams that his mother is still alive and homeless in the Bronx, and the two are reunited. Among the many poems included in this volume (48 in total) are "Porch Scribbles," "Why I Meditate," "Industrial Waves," "Airplane Blues," "Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms," "It's All So Brief," "I Love Old Whitman So," and "One Morning I Took a Walk in China." Susan Edwards (1943-2003) was a longtime teacher at Naropa Institute, joining the faculty in 1978 - just four years after Ginsberg co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in 1974 - and teaching there for two decades. In 2000, Edwards published a personal account of Ginsberg titled Wild West Wind: Allen Ginsberg Remembered.. Signed by Author. First Paperback Edition. Paperback. Fine.