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Rare Volume of Black Poet.

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:75.00 USD Estimated At:150.00 - 225.00 USD
Rare Volume of Black Poet.
Advance copy of Survival, by Herbert Simmons, twentieth-century black poet and one of the earliest black genre crime writers. Self-published by his Watts 13 Foundation, 1974, 5 1/4 x 8 1/4, 64 pp., softcover. Simmons' original verse on black pride, religion, and freedom, composed at the melding of the eras of civil rights and black power. Born in St. Louis in 1930, as a young man Simmons took journalism and writing courses, deciding to become a writer. Inspired by his friendship with trumpeter Miles Davis, he went to Washington University in 1953. His first novel, Corner Boy, was released in 1957, winning the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. His second work, Man Walking on Eggshells, appeared in 1962, about a jazz trumpeter - a character not unlike Miles Davis. His two novels offered a vivid view of black ghettos at the dawn of the civil rights movement, his characters moving between music and a life-on-the-street existence. Simmons' use of speech rhythms and prose was said to evoke the feel of bebop and cool jazz. After the 1965 Riots, the Watts Writers Workshop was founded by famed filmwriter Budd Schulberg, with Simmons playing a significant role (along with Yaphet Kotto and others). Minor edge yellowing, else fine. Unrecorded by Library of Congress Online Catalogue and WorldCat. Perhaps a unique survivor.