CHICAGO – Carolyn M. Rodgers, a Chicago poet and writer who helped found one of the country's oldest and largest black-owned book publishers, has died. She was 69.

The Chicago-based Third World Press says Rodgers died April 2at Mercy Hospital after battling an undisclosed illness.

The Chicago native wrote nine books,including "How I got Ovah." Her work often delved into the experiences of black women.

Rodgers is credited with being a star of the black arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She helped found Third World Press in the 1960s.She also started her own publishing company, Eden Press.

Funeral services have been held. A public memorial is planned May 4 where Rodgers' work will be read.

Rodgers is survived by her mother and two sisters.

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The idea of crossing over to a new way of life provides the substance that Rodgers explicitly longed for in several poems of self-doubt about her writing.Her third book takes its title from this concern: How I Got Ovah (1975) collects new and selected poems in a volume that marks a turning point in Rodgers's career.Like Giovanni and Sanchez, Rodgers rejects the official hatred of the liberation movement and embraces love."Some of Me Beauty" (53) recalls and dismisses her revolutionary persona:

  the fact is
that i don't hate any body any more
   i went through my mean period.

Now, however, she awakes to find herself

         carolyn
not imani man jua or soul sister poetess of
      the moment
    i saw more than a "sister". . .
    i saw a Woman. human.
              and black.
    i felt a spiritual transformation
a root revival of love.