HOTEL LAUTREAMONT by JoHn Ashbery (SIGNED)

Knopf, 1992, First edition, 157 pp., 7 1/4" X 9", Hardcover

Very good with some foxing to text block fore edge. (see photos)

SIGNED and inscribed to fellow poet, David Giannini

Hotel Lautramont's title refers to the pseudonym of Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, a precocious writer who lived in Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century. During the last year of his life, for reasons unknown to us, he moved from hotel to hotel; then, at age 24, committed suicide. Left behind were a few letters, a small book of enigmatic poems, and Les Chants de Maldoror (Songs of Maldoror), a book later embraced by the Surrealists as a masterpiece. In it, Lautr�amont says, "I warn whomsoever may read me to be careful not to come some vague, and moreso, false, idea of the literary beauties I pluck off like so many leaves, in the rapid development of my sentences." A warning John Ashbery could have written himself.