I have had Sonia Sanchez’s 1973 book love poems for over 30 years. I began earnestly collecting books & ephemera in the late 1980s. I gave away/sold most of my collection ~2008. love poems is one of about 100 books that I kept. I probably bought my copy of love poems at a used bookstore in DC or Bethesda in the mid to late 1990s. With my first collection, I catalogued all of my books, including where and when I bought them. Unfortunately, I can’t find that card catalogue. The book originally cost $4.95. I paid $6 for it. My copy belonged to a Margaret Cook, who signed the book in pencil.
love poems may have been Sanchez’s fourth published book for adults. She also wrote children’s books, including It’s a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs (Broadside Press, 1971) and The Adventures of Fat Head, Small Head and Square Head (The Third Press 1973). According to her website, her previous three books for adults were Homecoming (Broadside Press 1969); We a BaddDDD People (Broadside Press 1970); and A Blues Book for a Blue Black Magic Woman (Broadside Press 1973).
love poems is a beautifully designed book. I wonder if Sonia Sanchez requested purple as the primary color. Bennie Arrington designed the dust jacket. i love how Arrington designed the title to look like a lighted neon sign, perhaps inspired by artists who were experimenting with electronic technology in the late 1960s. Tom Lloyd, for example, included neon signs in the inaugural exhibition for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio Program in 1968. (Find more info on Lloyd on the museum’s website,)
I have not been able to find much about Arrington except that, in addition to love poems, he designed many of the dust jackets for Joseph Okpaku’s The Third Press Publishing Company, which was based in NYC (444 Central Park West 10025). I plan to do more research on Arrington.
There is more information about Joseph Okpaku and The Third Press. According to a NYT Spotlight article (20 July 1975), Okpaku started the press in 1970. (One of the first books he published was Angela Davis’ If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance in 1971.) According to Donald Franklin Joyce, a historian of book publishing, Okpaku was a robust publisher until the mid-1980s. Did you notice that Okpaku added a design element to the book? Look at the bottom of the spine in the photo above for the emblem for his press. It appears to be a bird.
Do you have a copy of this book? Do you have info about Sonia Sanchez’s design requests? Do you have information about Bennie Arrington or Joseph Okpaku? Are there publishing records from The Third Press?
If so, please share. I’ll also add more info as I find it.