HOLD FAST TO DREAMS; Poems old & New selected by ..

Chicago: Follett, 1969. First edition. (this is a set of stapled fasicles laid into a dj.). 8vo, pp. 192. Untrimmed. Cover little bent but a very good copy. An advance copy, these sheets have not been bound but staped and laid into the dj. Scarce thus. An antholog of Bontemps's favorite poems, many by African-Americans including Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Waring Cuney, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and others. From Wiklipedia: "Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902 - 1973)] was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz. His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, was a schoolteacher.
When Bontemps was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became known as the Watts district. After attending public schools, Bontemps attended Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, where he graduated in 1923. He majored in English and minored in history, and he was also a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.Bontemps wrote many novels that inspired and touched the hearts of readers. In addition, he taught at Oakwood Junior College, challenging students with poetry and theatrical performances.