Watts Poets; A Book of New Poetry & Essays
Los Angeles: House of Respect, 1968. First Edition. 8vo, 90 (4);;; printed wrappers, stapled. Wrappers used, with some faint staining; very good. Item #206739
Anthology compiled by Quincey Troupe after breaking away from the Watts Writer's Workshop that was founded by screenwriter Budd Schulberg in the aftermath of the Watts Rebellion of 1965. Although that workshop was a significant incubator for new voices such as Troupe, Jayne Cortez, Wanda Coleman, Stanley Crouch and others, by 1966 fissures had emerged. Troupe came to think of Schulberg's efforts as "literary sharecropping" and he and other younger members of the group embraced a more radical stance that signaled the emergence of the Black Arts movement that flourished in the 1970s. Several members of the group lived communally in a house on Beach Street n Watts that thye named the House of Respect. In his history of the Black Arts movement, James Smethurst describes this slef-published volume as "perhaps the first truly nationalist Black Arts anthology in terms of content, format, and production." (The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, p. 310). Contributors include Troupe and Crouch, as well as Elaine Brown, Lance Jeffers, K. Curtis Lyle, Clyde Mays, Ojenke, Blossom Powe, and others.
Price: $250.00