MEMOIRS OF AN INTERGLACIAL AGE - INSCRIBED TO SHERRY VETTER
San Francisco: The Auerhahn Press, 1960. First Edition. Item #8584
First Printing, wrappered issue, one of 1,250 copies. Quarto (28cm); original pictorial card wrappers; [x],49,[5]pp. Inscribed by Whalen on the title page to Sherry Vetter, a girlfriend of Richard Brautigan's: "30/31:I:72 Bolinas / For Sherry at Richard's / All best / Philip." Hint of sunning to spine, faint finger-soil to covers, with light wear to extremities and a faint vertical crease toward left edge of front wrapper; some transfer from the ink inscription onto the opposing page; Very Good+.
An attractive collection of Whalen's poems (several of them originally published in the pages of Yugen, Foot, Combustion, Galley Sail, and Jabberwock), produced by Dave Haselwood's Auerhahn Press. Brautigan met Sherry Vetter at an Irish pub in North Beach, early in 1970. He was instantly smitten, and began a two-week courtship by phone. "Richard, for his part, tutored Sherry in his literary preferences, trying to influence her reading tastes. He introduced her to the work of McClure, Snyder, and Creeley and to classic writers "he thought were really great, like Baudelaire and Sappho." He recited poetry to her. Vetter recalled Phil Whalen's poem "Three Variations All About Love," a personal favorite" (Hjortsberg, Jubilee Hitchhiker, p.420). Vetter would eventually grace the cover of Brautigan's 1971 book Revenge of the Lawn, in black and white. Auerhahn 6; Lepper, p.419. 8584.
Price: $500.00