#000143
Sombra
Harry Behn
Signed / inscribed
*Sombra* is a scarce, privately printed collection of poems by Harry Behn, issued in Copenhagen by Christtreu in 1961. Behn (1898–1973) was an Arizona-raised Harvard graduate who lived several lives — Hollywood screenwriter, painter, founder of the University of Arizona Press — before becoming best known as a poet for children and a graceful translator of Japanese haiku. This small foreign printing sits apart from his popular children's books: a more private, adult gathering of his verse. Signed copies like this one are prized by collectors precisely because the edition was so limited. For readers who know Behn only from *Cricket Songs* or *The Little Hill*, *Sombra* offers a quieter, less familiar glimpse of a restless and cultivated poetic sensibility.
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The author
Harry Behn was born in 1898 near Prescott, Arizona, and graduated from Harvard in 1922. He worked as a Hollywood scenario writer — associated with King Vidor's films — before settling in Tucson, where he taught creative writing and, in 1960, founded the University of Arizona Press. He is best remembered for his poetry for children, beginning with The Little Hill (1949), and for his translations and interpretations of Japanese haiku, notably Cricket Songs (1964). He died in Seville, Spain, in 1973.
The book
Sombra is a slim collection printed privately in Copenhagen by Christtreu in 1961, well outside the mainstream of Behn's American publishing. Its small print run and foreign origin make it one of the scarcer items in his bibliography; signed and inscribed copies are correspondingly sought after.
How to read it
Approached alongside Behn's better-known work, Sombra reads as a more personal, adult counterpart to the children's verse and haiku that made his name — a reminder that the gentle, attentive voice of those books belonged to a widely traveled and formally ambitious poet.
For more context
Readers can turn to Behn's haiku translations in Cricket Songs and to the Harry Behn papers held in university archives for a fuller picture of his many-sided career.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Harry Behn
- Publisher
- Christtreu, Copenhagen
- Place of publication
- Copenhagen
- Year
- 1961
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Poetry
- Location
- Maine
To Ed and Sally Smith - we've missed you! Consider this, though you bought it, a present & thoughts that often include you. - Harry
SIGNED / inscribed; scarce private printing