Bomb
Gregory Corso.
City Lights: 1958. First edition, first issue. Single sheet folded into a pamphlet. Signed on the cover. Tear on the bottom of the front wrap. Mild soiling on the wraps beside the slight fold that runs down the spine. Unpaginated. Good. Signed.
You could call this the break up edition, since after Bomb offended Lawrence Ferlinghetti and incited a student riot at Oxford, City Lights cut Corso loose. Here is the only signed first printing around. Think about what the footloose Corso felt as he signed it.
"O Bomb thy BOOM His tomb
That I lean forward on a desk of science
an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose
half-smart about wars bombs especially bombs
That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love
That I can't exist in a world that consents
a child in a park a man dying in an electric-chair
That I am able to laugh at all things
all that I know and do not know thus to conceal my pain
That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man
knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men
and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship"

