A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems. San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1909.
First Edition, First Issue Binding (2,000 copies printed). BAL 18751. Sterling was Jack London's best friend. By World War I, he would be known as the King of Bohemia and the poet laureate of San Francisco. In an accompanying essay to "A Wine of Wizardry," Abrose Bierce claimed not only that Sterling "is a very great poet - incomparably the greatest we have on this side of the Atlantic" but also that the poem itself ranked with those of Keats, Coleridge and Rossetti. Sterling's commitment to the metered and rhythmic confines of 19th century Romantic poetry placed him starkly at odds with the emerging free-verse and subjective inclinations of the modern poetry movement in Europe and the United States. Indeed, Sterling's work was consistently roasted by modernists, most notably Harriet Monroe, the influential founder and editor of the journal Poetry, who characterized Sterling's poetry as "the frippery of a by-gone fashion." By the time Sterling committed suicide in November 1926, in his Bohemian Club digs on Taylor Street, he had completed more than a dozen volumes of poetry and verse dramas, published in virtually every major literary magazine of his day and had been included in several major poetry anthologies, including Monroe's "The New Poetry" (1917). He also became a fine and widely published critic and essayist. Near Fine but for fading to spine cloth, in Good dustjacket, evenly chipped along top edge, inch chip off top spine end, chipping at lower front flap corner.
Price: $850.00