To Eberhart From Ginsberg: An Historic Document From the Beat Era Published Now For The First Time.

GINSBERG, Allen; Richard Eberhart.

Item Number: 104058

Lincoln: The Penmaen Press, 1976.

First edition of this collection of Ginsberg’s remarkable 1956 letter to Richard Eberhart about his epic beat poem Howl and Eberhart’s New York Times article West Coast Rhythms which drew national attention to the Beat poets, collected with comments by both poets. Octavo, original pictorial wrappers, signed by Allen Ginsberg on the title page and lengthily inscribed by Eberhart on the half-title page who has written beneath the half-title ‘To Eberhart From Ginsberg’ “and from Eberhart to Richard Lautz with thanks for coming to my … reading this fall, and for remembering the reading at La Salle in 1971, Now in 1982, with best wishes for the future, Richard Eberhart.” The recipient, Richard Lautz became a member of La Salle’s English Department in 1968, and after only seven years at La Salle was honored with the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1975. For two decades he was advisor to La Salle’s undergraduate literary magazine, Grimoire, and was a longtime poetry editor of Four Quarters, La Salle’s professional literary magazine. In 1990 he donated his several hundred volume collection of contemporary American poetry, nearly all first editions and many inscribed to Richard, to form the Lautz Special Collection in the Library. He was an especially popular teacher in the Honors Program with his “The City in Literature” upper-level seminar. In fine condition. A unique association linking three great literary figures.

In 1956, Eberhart was sent to San Francisco by The New York Times to report on the Beat Poetry scene. His research resulted in the publication of 'West Coast Rhythms', a short piece published in the New York Times Book Review which called national attention to Beat Generation, and Allen Ginsberg in particular. Eberhart wrote of the group of young poets, "The most remarkable poem of the young group, written during the past year, is Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, a 29-year-old poet who is the son of Louis Ginsberg, a poet known to newspaper readers in the East...It is Biblical in its repetitive grammatical build-up. It is a howl against everything in our mechanisitic civilization which kills the spirit, assuming that the louder you shout the more likely you are to be heard."