San Francisco: The Carp Press, 1959. First edition. One of 500 copies self-published by Richard Brautigan and his wife Virginia Dionne Adler. 214 x 133 mm. [20] pp. A Very Good+ copy. Publisher's paper wrappers printed and red in black. A bit of toning and a couple spots of abrasion to front cover. A fresh and attractive copy of Brautigan's scarce second book.

Lay the Marble Tea was Richard Brautigan's second published book and his first published poetry collection. Though Brautigan had previously published "The Return of the Rivers" (1957), a single-poem broadside, and The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958), a single multi-part poem printed as a chapbook, Lay the Marble Tea was his first book to compile multiple poems.

Brautigan published several books of poetry and a novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur (1965), before he saw his first critical success with the genre-bending novella Trout Fishing in America (1967). The novella established Brautigan's reputation as one of the leading authorial voices of 1960s counterculture in the United States. The bizarre, satirical poems collected in Lay the Marble Tea preempt the enigmatic voice of Trout Fishing in America and anticipate Brautigan at his best. Very Good + (Item #8317)