A Philip Levine Collection

	Title: On the Edge Printing: First Edition Year of publication: 1963 Publisher: Stone Wall Press City: Iowa City Cover: hardback Comments: First hardback edition published in limited quantity of 220. They were printed by hand from Romanée types on Golden Hind paper. Printing: Second Edition (paperback) Year of publication: 1964 Publisher: The Second Press City: Iowa City Cover: paperback Table of Contents: I Mad Day in March Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child The Drunkard Green Thumb Lights I have Seen Before For Fran In a Vacant House Passing Out An Abandoned Factory, Detroit, 25 Premonition at Twilight Berenda Slough The Turning Sierra Kid II Small Game My Poets L'Homme et la Bete The Negatives On the Edge Gangrene The Horse The Distant Winter
cover of paperback edition
	The Turning Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more a child, Only a man,--one who has Looked upon his own nakedness Without shame, and in defeat Has seen nothing to bless. Touched once, like a plum, I turned Rotten in the meat, or like The plum blossom I never Saw, hard at the edges, burned At the first entrance of life, And so endured, unreckoned, Untaken, with nothing to give. The first Jew was God; the second Denied him; I am alive.
photo from back cover of paperback edition note from first edition hardback in downtown branch of the Los Angeles Public Library