William Carlos Williams. The Broken Span.

Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941. 

8vo.; ex libris sticker on front endpaper; gray boards lettered in black and magenta; rubbed; bumped. In original dust jacket; price-clipped.

First edition. Signed by Williams in a post-stroke hand on the front free endpaper. 

A collection of 11 poems, including the 15-part “For the Poem Patterson,” issued as the first volume in New Directions’s “Poet of the Month” series, which consisted of thin volumes of either lengthy individual poems or small collections of poems by one author. The series was discontinued after a few years.