Portable Soul
Chicago: Third World Press, 1969. First Edition. First Printing. 21 pp. VG+ in stapled illustrated wraps (rubbing and toning). Cover image designed by Alexis Deveaux.
Plumpp’s scarce first book, reportedly the fifth to be printed by Haki R. Madhubuti’s (born in 1942 as Don L. Lee) Third World Press. Plumpp was born in rural Clinton, MS (the Sterling D. Plumpp Collection resides at University of Mississippi) and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago. 16 poems, many meditations on blackness, including a poem for Le Roi Jones, “I’ll Find Our Way” (“Black boy leaning, / singing over a dead white cop”), “From Gallows’ Pole” (“Black hope / is budding. Blackness / will revenge itself, / make the pole a pooled / monument of black defiance”), “Election” (“Elevation of the / black ideal to / godhood, the expressed / perfection of black art”), “You Made Them Walk [For Mr. Muhammad]” (“You made them say love / Build a bridge of black hope / Upon the rampant grave of guilt, / And move toward brotherhood”), “Beyond the Nigger” (“reaching into the festering / brain waves of white america . . . . night the black soul cracks the universe free”), and “Black Resurrection” (“Oh but could I hear the melodic / murmur of chains / creating the chords / of my captivity”).
Plumpp’s first book, which emerged out of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s, presents a riveting look at the Black experience at this tumultuous cultural moment. Scarce—not found in commerce or auction records although well represented in OCLC. Item #1253
Price: $1,250.00