"For My People" by Margaret Walker; illustrated with five lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett
New York: Limited Editions
Club; 1992
he large-scale, letterpress
books featured in The Book as a Work of Art are from the
collection of Queens Borough Public Library, and are published by Limited
Editions Club, famous for the high caliber artists (Motherwell, de Kooning,
Catlett) and writers (Paz, Angelou, Brontë) that they publish. The
contemporary writers often work with the artists to produce images that
best interpret the text. This collaborative process ensures a visual harmony
that integrates literature with art.
Born in 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama, the poet Margaret Walker is one of the most talented writers to come out of the American South and one of the most powerful voices of Afro-America. "When she speaks of and for her people, older voices are mixed with hers - the voices of Methodist forebears and preachers who preached the Word, the anonymous voices of many who lived and were forgotten and yet out of bondage and hope made a lasting music," wrote Stephen Vincent Benet. To illustrate Ms. Walker's best-known poem, "For My People," Elizabeth Catlett has created five beautifully striking lithographs.
Each of the poem's ten stanzas was hand-set in thirty-point Albertus type, a sans-serif face that looks as if chiseled out of granite. The text was printed on a letterpress on French-made Arches cover paper. The Elizabeth Catlett lithographs were printed on Arches papers. The book is bound in imported red Japanese linen over heavy boards. The box is covered in black cotton.