HOUSEBOAT DAYS

First edition, first printing. Original quarter burgundy cloth over grey-brown paper-covered boards, lettered in silver and black to the spine. In the dustwrapper, the front panel showing R. B. Kitaj's 1976 painting, 'Houseboat Days (for John Ashbery)'. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean and bright throughout. Light bumping to upper outer corners, the cloth nicked to the upper edge of front and rear hinges. In the very near fine, dustwrapper, showing the merest rubbing to corners and a half-centimetre closed tear to the upper edge of the rear fold. A sharp, bright copy.

'Houseboat Days' was Ashbery's first volume after the multi-prize-winning success of 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror' (1975), and as John Shoptaw notes in his indispensable study of the poet, it "may be taken as Ashbery's declaration of independence from a growing public expecting more "Ashbery poetry" from Ashbery [, as] though he owed it to his audience to confound their expectations" (the poet later described it as a favourite among his books). Harder-edged than its more consistently lyrical predecessor, 'Houseboat Days' contains some of Ashbery's finest poems, including 'Pyrography', 'Wet Casements', 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' and 'Syringa'. The volume was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977. (John Shoptaw, 'On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery's Poetry', Cambridge MA: 1995).