Product Description
An association copy belonging to critic Sven Birkerts, from his library.
Not signed, but laid in is an autographed postcard signed (ALS) sent in the year of the book's publication from Bolongna featuring El Greco's "The Last Supper" in full color on the recto.
On the verso, Heaney begins "Is it I, Lord?'--I think you'll remember the story .
.
.
But it's more a case of mea culpa.
" He goes on to send regrets about fail to acknowledge Sven's birthday ("a case of the deep litter desk").
A sweet note and atmospheric in light of the El Greco painting.
Birkerts and Heaney both lived in Cambridge, MA, where Heaney taught at Harvard part-time and Birkerts at Boston University.
Birkerts is one of our foremost critics and edited the journal Agni.
Among other honors, he is the recipient of a Guggenheim, the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle, and the PEN Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the best book of essays.
Hewrote of Heaney on many occasions, including several "In Memoriam" pieces such as this long one inAeon in which he describes their friendship: "I use the first name because we were friends.
Not best friends ? he had his various true intimates ? but real friends.
That?s what I tell myself.
We had met at a poetry reading in Cambridge back in the early 1980s, soon after he started his once-a-year teaching job at Harvard.
He was approachable, easy to have a drink with, and soon enough a circle of friends had fastened around him.
There were dinners, long evenings, at our house and other houses.
Seamus, his wife Marie when she was over for a visit, poets of his acquaintance.
It was all very gregarious ? we were 30 years younger then.
Later, after he had stopped teaching at Harvard, there were still visits, in Cambridge, in Dublin, more long evenings.
" A touching association as such.
The postcard isn't stamped, so it must have been sent originally in an envelope.
The book is very near fine with one small spot on the top face of the text block; in a near fine jacket with a bit of wear to corners and spine crown.
Postcard near fine with one wet smudge at upper right, but doesn't mar the writing.
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