The Black Riders and Other Lines | Stephen Crane
Author: Stephen Crane
Publisher: Underworld Amusements
Pages: 72 Size: 6x9"
Release date: 2019
Stephen Crane is most well known for his fiction, but a number of years ago I stumbled across one of the poems from this collection and it gripped me. I searched for a copy of the whole book and there wasn't much available. Though it was collected into compilations of Cranes writings, I wanted an attractive copy of just the book. I found a library reprint but decided that I would honor the text with my own edition. In 2017 I made a very limited run of 23 hardback copies and gifted those for Yule, and finally in 2019 I'm releasing an exclusive paperback edition at a low price for anyone interested. Though newly typeset, I followed the established style of the original. The poems are merely numbered, and the entire book is set in small capital letters.
The poem in question follows:
in the desert i saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands, and ate of it. i said, “is it good, friend?” “it is bitter-bitter,” he answered; “but i like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.”
