The death of Cock Robin Hardcover - 1989

Newark: University of Delaware Press ; London : Associated University Presses, 1989. Hardcover. Good/Good-. Signed. 1989 INSCRIBED by W. D. Snodgrass on verso of half-title page, opposite title, 'for Barbara Nelson'. Orange-red cloth boards with gilt titling on spine, worn at extremities. Glossy white, unpriceclipped, pictorial DJ, lightly edgeworn. Binding is tight. Interior is unmarked. Quarto. Photos depict actual book offered for sale. Books are carefully packaged by hand and shipped from our family-owned bookshop in the US. BOOK INFO: 'The Death of Cock Robin consists of a cycle of thirty-three poems by W. D. Snodgrass and an equal number of paintings by DeLoss McGraw. Neither the poems nor the paintings take priority and neither illustrates the other. The two cycles coexist independently, although they relate to and enrich one another, Many of these poems and paintings share titles, and some of each were created with a particular piece from the other cycle in mind. Others of these works, however, correspond only to the general tenor of the complementary art form. Both the poems and the paintings deal with the mythic figure, Cock Robin, who in the old nursery rhyme was killed by the sparrow. Both cycles moreover, introduce a human character, W. D., an admirer of Cock Robin, who tries to warn him of his immediate danger, and then, after the robin has been shot down, to save or help him. This places W. D. himself in considerable peril from the authorities who accuse him of the apparent murder and subject him to a number of threatening interrogations. Eventually, however, W. D. escapes by disguising himself as his supposed victim. William Chace writes about this unique collaboration in his Afterword: '...The result, open to the eye and mind, is an enormously handsome fusion of the best work of two practiced and original artists. Our eyes and minds are strengthened in encountering that work, and we are in the presence of a triumphant doubling of creative power.'' [~from the DJ endflap]. 95 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 26 cm.