Heart First Into This Ruin by Wanda Coleman
Heart First Into This Ruin was published in hardcover paper-over-boards in June 2022. The endpapers match the light blue used on the cover for the title. The cover art is by Ken Price.
Wanda Coleman (b.1946 – d.2013) was an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. She was often called “the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles.” Coleman was the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Bathwater Wine, which was awarded the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Poets—the first book by an African American woman to receive the prize.
Heart First Into This Ruin was published by Black Sparrow Press in 2022 and includes an introduction by Mahogany L. Browne, the first ever poet-in-residence at New York City’s Lincoln Center.
Coleman’s experimental “American Sonnet” series was borne from influences as diverse as Huey P. Newton and Herman Melville, Amiri Baraka, and Robert Duncan. Her fresh new form inspired countless others, from Terrance Hayes to Billy Collins. Coleman published one hundred sonnets between 1986 and 2001, and Heart First Into This Ruin marks the first time all of Coleman’s American Sonnets appeared together in one book.
For the cover design, Tammy Ackerman used Plaza and Bernhard Gothic. The interior is set in Palatino with Bernhard Gothic for titling. The cover art (just the black and white line drawing) is by Ken Price, whose art has been used many times for Black Sparrow Press books, including Heat Wave by Charles Bukowski, and The Plain of Smokes by Harvey Mudd.
While selecting poems for Coleman’s 2020 book Wicked Enchantment, the poet Terrance Hayes also made a series of drawings of Coleman. This is one of those drawings.
The Bernhard Gothic used on the cover is also brought inside for titling. The poems are set in Palatino.
Every Black Sparrow Press colophon now includes mention of the founders, John and Barbara Martin.
The back cover
