PERMIT ME VOYAGE

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934. First printing. Very good plus in very good jacket.. First edition of Agee's debut collection, published as the thirty-third volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets only two years after the author's graduation from Harvard. Claimed as a peculiarly brilliant critic, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist according to the interests and allegiances of his readership, Agee has also been hailed in turn as a poet above all - "Basically, he was a poet" (David McDowell). The nature and quality of Agee's poetry, left undefined and nearly unmentioned in MacLeish's foreword, was described after his death by his friend and contemporary Robert Fitzgerald: "A sense of the breathing community immersed in mystery, exposed to a range of experience from what can only be called the divine to what can only be called the diabolical, most intelligent in awe and most needful of mercy - a religious sense of life, in short - moved James Agee in his best work." 9'' x 6''. Original green cloth. In original unclipped ($2.00) printed green dust jacket. 59, [3] pages. Minor edgewear and sunning to boards. Light chipping, faint soil to wrappers.