Kenny's. Twenty poems for a lost tavern. Foreword by William Murray

Iowa City: Windhover Press, [1970]. Edition limited to 250 copies, 8vo, pp. [48]; original black cloth-backed blue paper-covered boards lettered in gilt on the upper cover; fine. From the library of Kim Merker. The last paragraph of Murray's Foreword on p. [9] has been excised as the result of a legal action by Kenny's landlady - see below. This copy inscribed "For Kim Merker / with love and / appreciation / Irene." Irene ran Kenny's, a local tavern. She is described at length by Murray as "a mysterious woman. You never knew whether to like her a lot and adopt her as your Muse, or to dislike her because she had to be tough with customers on occasion. She was a short, plump woman who wore horn-rimmed glasses. If she liked you, she liked you a lot, and showed it by playing verbal games with you. If she disliked you, she ignored you." Among the contributing poets are Robert Dana, George P. Elliott, Paul Engle, Anselm Hollo, Donald Justice, Philip Levine, William Stafford, Mark Strand, James Tate, and others. "Kenny's was a wonderful tavern in Iowa City where, when I first came here, all of the Workshop people went." The libelous line which Merker was obliged to remove, concerned the clientele at Kenny's as seen through the eyes of the landlady who upped the rent so much that Irene was forced to close the tavern. Berger, Printing & the Mind of Merker, 41: "Each copy was issued with a paper band (present here, and laid in) around the book saying: 'For legal reasons a paragraph has been excised from the introduction.' Pages 9/10 have a rectangular paragraph sliced neatly out'." In most copies this excised text was pasted over with Curtis Rag paper. In this - Merker's copy - there is no Curtis Rag, only the hole. Item #62026

Price: $950.00