Leaning Forward.
Inscribed to Kay Boyle
Paley, Grace. Leaning Forward. Poems. Afterword by Jane Cooper. Penobscott, Maine: Granite Press, (1985).
8vo.; full color illustrated wrappers, black and white author photo on the lower panel; perfect bound; gentle wear to tips.
First edition of this collection, with an afterword by Jane Cooper discussing Paley’s poetry in relation to her prose, and highlighting her feminism and her relationship with New York. A review copy, with the review slip loosely inserted.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the title page to Kay Boyle: For my dear Kay with love admiration & thanks for her exemplriness [sic] Grace. Boyle, whom Paley would later eulogize at the 1994 proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, began notes for a review of the book—about 100 words jotted on the verso of a letter a student sent her—as follows:
I am told that Grace Paley wrote almost nothing but poems until she was almost thirty, but to see the present collection as in any way notes for stories would be a mistake. For the truth is that each poem tells a story in itself. Consider, for instance, the poem “My Mother: 33 Years Later,” or “Having Arrived by Bike at Battery Park,” or “On the Fourth Floor,” or “A Warning.” There is nothing that need be added to complete the stories they tell. They have, these poems, said it all quite clearly. The characters have spoken in their own voices, the memories evoked are vivid. If one pays heed
And here the notes break off, but a reading of Jane Cooper’s afterword to the volumes reveals that Boyle was writing against it.
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