In Defense of the Earth.

FIRST EDITION, title printed in red, handling mark to margin of p. 15, pp. 93, 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in gilt and faded, a little spotted overall, textblock edges toned and faintly spotted, dustjacket a little browned and chipped, good. Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf, in the Summer of 1959, 'With much love to Derek Savage, [.] Kenneth Rexroth'. The recipient was, like Rexroth, a poet and anarchist, and the crammed typed aerogram (January 1951) to Savage, laid in, explores their shared interests in detail: Rexroth considers the anarchist centre of Rathbone Place superior to its San Francisco counterpart, 'the people don't prey on each other [.] they are not both collapsed and tender minded', observing that 'what really seems to be wrong with England is the still potent systematized hypocrisy of the C of E; the anarchist credentials of Herbert Read are discussed, Rexroth being in favour, contrary to Savage - 'he seems a tower of strength and purity'; Rexroth refers to his own upbringing 'in Chicago in a circle of hard drinking, hard fighting I.W.W.s real tough sons of bitches'. Discussion then turns to Mysticism, with Rexroth recommending Evelyn Underhill's work and gauging Savage's familiarity with the English Mystics ('Richard Rolle, Julia[sic] of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing') whilst decrying the 'Baroque' mysticism of St Theresa and St John of the Cross - 'the frying meat of the counter reformation can always be smelled off in the background; of Alchemy, he recommends Thomas Vaughan ('can still be picked up from places like Blackwell's'), and the work of A.E. Waite; Henry Miller's 'Rosy Crucifixion' is summarily dismissed as 'simply dreadful'. The situation in Korea, as well as the 'constant mass psychosis' represented by 'hatred of Russia' has left his country precariously close to war, 'in the next two or three months' - and 'unless they have some superbomb up their sleeves, they are sure to lose'. But Rexroth ends on a happier note: 'Our baby is fat and sassy'; before signing 'Faithfully, Kenneth'. The letter includes a reference to drinking with Dylan Thomas 'in a local highbrow pub' in the US, his companion's inebriated tumbling from barstools prompting the bartender to comment that 'We send them T.S. Eliot, and look what they send us'. Laid in is a signed typescript of Rexroth's 2pp. 'Lament for Dylan Thomas', a poem first printed in the Yale Literary Review in 1954 and then considerably revised and expanded for separate publication (as 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' ) in 1955 - before being collected in this volume. As an expression of generational rage, railing against the establishment who have - he avers - the Welshman's blood on their hands, the poem has been compared with, and was likely an influence upon, Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'. Eliot, the basis for the barman's comparison in Rexroth's anecdote, is here among the accused: 'Old Possum sprinkled him with a tea ball'. The larger collection in which the revised elegy for Thomas resides offers a full account of Rexroth's skill as a poet: it is mostly lyrical in character, beginning with a sequence of love poems for his wife; there are poems, including, most substantially, from the Japanese, as well as a 'Bestiary' for 'very sophisticated children indeed' (blurb). A poem towards the close portrays in verse one of the themes of his letter to Savage: 'Merdepoem No. 7321, Portrait of the Author as a Young Anarchist'.…