rare books

One of the more curious items to come to light during the unpacking of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library was a volume of poems in Italian called L’alito eterna by the obscure Italian poet Renata Pescanti Botta. What made this book so intriguing was that the margins and empty space in the first half were filled with hand-written verse and illustrations in Romanian and the cover bore the manuscript title Femeia neagră a unui culcuş de hoți. The only clue to its authorship was the hand-written name “Andrei Codrescu” on the cover.

Cataloging the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library has revealed some surprising treasures. One of the less obvious ones was a book by John Lennon that sat uncataloged on a shelf for a number of years because it didn't look that special. Turns out that it was.