There is, perhaps, a better excuse for giving an Anthology of American
Negro Poetry to the public than can be offered for many of the anthologies
that have recently been issued. The public, generally speaking, does not
know that there are American Negro poets--to supply this lack of
information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's effort.
Moreover, the matter of Negro poets and the production of literature by
the colored people in this country involves more than supplying
information that is lacking. It is a matter which has a direct bearing on
the most vital of American problems.
A people may become great through many means, but there is only one
measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final
measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the
literature and art they have produced. The world does not know that a
people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No
people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked
upon by the world as distinctly inferior.
The status of the Negro in the United States' is more a question of
national mental attitude toward the race than of actual conditions. And
nothing will do more to change that mental attitude and raise his status
than a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the
production of literature and art.
Is there likelihood that the American Negro will be able to do this? There
is, for the good reason that he possesses the innate powers. He has the
emotional endowment, the originality and artistic conception, and, what is
more important, the power of creating that which has universal appeal and
influence.
I make here what may appear to be a more startling statement by saying
that the Negro has already proved the possession of these powers by being
the creator of the only things artistic that have yet sprung from American
soil and been universally acknowledged as distinctive American products.
These creations by the American Negro may be summed up under four heads.
The first two are the Uncle Remus stories, which were collected by Joel
Chandler Harris, and the "spirituals" or slave songs, to which the Fisk
Jubilee Singers made the public and the musicians of both the United
States and Europe listen. The Uncle Remus stories constitute the greatest
body of folklore that America has produced, and the "spirituals" the
greatest body of folk-song. I shall speak of the "spirituals" later
because they are more than folk-songs, for in them the Negro sounded the
depths, if he did not scale the heights, of music.
The other two creations are the Cakewalk and ragtime. We do not need to go
very far back to remember when cakewalking was the rage in the United
States, Europe and South America. Society in this country and royalty
abroad spent time in practicing the intricate steps. Paris pronounced it
the "poetry of motion." The popularity of the cakewalk passed away but its
influence remained. The influence can be seen to-day on any American stage
where there is dancing.
The influence which the Negro has exercised on the art of dancing in this
country has been almost absolute. For generations the "buck and wing" and
the "stop-time" dances, which are strictly Negro, have been familiar to
American theatre audiences. A few years ago the public discovered the
"turkey trot," the "eagle rock," "ballin' the jack," and several other
varieties that started the modern dance craze. These dances were quickly
followed by the "tango," a dance originated by the Negroes of Cuba and
later transplanted to South America. (This fact is attested by no less
authority than Vincente Blasco Ibañez in his "Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.") Half the floor space in the country was then turned over to
dancing, and highly paid exponents sprang up everywhere. The most noted,
Mr. Vernon Castle, and, by the way, an Englishman, never danced except to
the music of a colored band, and he never failed to state to his audiences
that most of his dances had long been done by "your colored people," as he
put it.
Any one who witnesses a musical production in which there is dancing
cannot fail to notice the Negro stamp on all the movements; a stamp which
even the great vogue of Russian dances that swept the country about the
time of the popular dance craze could not affect. That peculiar swaying of
the shoulders which you see done everywhere by the blond girls of the
chorus is nothing more than a movement from the Negro dance referred to
above, the "eagle rock." Occasionally the movement takes on a suggestion
of the, now outlawed, "shimmy."
As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that it is the one
artistic production by which America is known the world over. It has been
all-conquering. Everywhere it is hailed as "American music."
For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency to divorce
Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to take from him the credit of having
originated it. Probably the younger people of the present generation do
not know that Ragtime is of Negro origin. The change wrought in Ragtime
and the way in which it is accepted by the country have been brought about
chiefly through the change which has gradually been made in the words and
stories accompanying the music. Once the text of all Ragtime songs was
written in Negro dialect, and was about Negroes in the cabin or in the
cotton field or on the levee or at a jubilee or on Sixth Avenue or at a
ball, and about their love affairs. To-day, only a small proportion of
Ragtime songs relate at all to the Negro. The truth is, Ragtime is now
national rather than racial. But that does not abolish in any way the
claim of the American Negro as its originator.
Ragtime music was originated by colored piano players in the questionable
resorts of St. Louis, Memphis, and other Mississippi River towns. These
men did not know any more about the theory of music than they did about
the theory of the universe. They were guided by their natural musical
instinct and talent, but above all by the Negro's extraordinary sense of
rhythm. Any one who is familiar with Ragtime may note that its chief charm
is not in melody, but in rhythms. These players often improvised crude
and, at times, vulgar words to fit the music. This was the beginning of
the Ragtime song.
Ragtime music got its first popular hearing at Chicago during the world's
fair in that city. From Chicago it made its way to New York, and then
started on its universal triumph.
The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, "jes' grew." Some of these
earliest songs were taken down by white men, the words slightly altered or
changed, and published under the names of the arrangers. They sprang into
immediate popularity and earned small fortunes. The first to become widely
known was "The Bully," a levee song which had been long used by
roustabouts along the Mississippi. It was introduced in New York by Miss
May Irwin, and gained instant popularity. Another one of these "jes' grew"
songs was one which for a while disputed for place with Yankee Doodle;
perhaps, disputes it even to-day. That song was "A Hot Time in the Old
Town To-night"; introduced and made popular by the colored regimental
bands during the Spanish-American War.
Later there came along a number of colored men who were able to transcribe
the old songs and write original ones. I was, about that time, writing
words to music for the music show stage in New York. I was collaborating
with my brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and the late Bob Cole. I remember
that we appropriated about the last one of the old "jes' grew" songs. It
was a song which had been sung for years all through the South. The words
were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody.
We took it, re-wrote the verses, telling an entirely different story from
the original, left the chorus as it was, and published the song, at first
under the name of "Will Handy." It became very popular with college boys,
especially at football games, and perhaps still is. The song was, "Oh,
Didn't He Ramble!"
In the beginning, and for quite a while, almost all of the Ragtime songs
that were deliberately composed were the work of colored writers. Now, the
colored composers, even in this particular field, are greatly outnumbered
by the white.
The reader might be curious to know if the "jes' grew" songs have ceased
to grow. No, they have not; they are growing all the time. The country has
lately been flooded with several varieties of "The Blues." These "Blues,"
too, had their origin in Memphis, and the towns along the Mississippi.
They are a sort of lament of a lover who is feeling "blue" over the loss
of his sweetheart. The "Blues" of Memphis have been adulterated so much on
Broadway that they have lost their pristine hue. But whenever you hear a
piece of music which has a strain like this in it:
[Illustration: Music]
you will know you are listening to something which belonged originally to
Beale Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee. The original "Memphis Blues," so far as
it can be credited to a composer, must be credited to Mr. W. C. Handy, a
colored musician of Memphis.
As illustrations of the genuine Ragtime song in the making, I quote the
words of two that were popular with the Southern colored soldiers in
France. Here is the first:
"Mah mammy's lyin' in her grave,
Mah daddy done run away,
Mah sister's married a gamblin' man,
An' I've done gone astray.
Yes, I've done gone astray, po' boy,
An' I've done gone astray,
Mah sister's married a gamblin' man,
An' I've done gone astray, po' boy."
These lines are crude, but they contain something of real poetry, of that
elusive thing which nobody can define and that you can only tell that it
is there when you feel it. You cannot read these lines without becoming
reflective and feeling sorry for "Po' Boy."
Now, take in this word picture of utter dejection:
"I'm jes' as misabul as I can be,
I'm unhappy even if I am free,
I'm feelin' down, I'm feelin' blue;
I wander 'round, don't know what to do.
I'm go'n lay mah haid on de railroad line,
Let de B. & O. come and pacify mah min'."
These lines are, no doubt, one of the many versions of the famous "Blues."
They are also crude, but they go straight to the mark. The last two lines
move with the swiftness of all great tragedy.
In spite of the bans which musicians and music teachers have placed on it,
the people still demand and enjoy Ragtime. In fact, there is not a corner
of the civilized world in which it is not known and liked. And this proves
its originality, for if it were an imitation, the people of Europe, at
least, would not have found it a novelty. And it is proof of a more
important thing, it is proof that Ragtime possesses the vital spark, the
power to appeal universally, without which any artistic production, no
matter how approved its form may be, is dead.
Of course, there are those who will deny that Ragtime is an artistic
production. American musicians, especially, instead of investigating
Ragtime, dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But this has been the course
of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the people
like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is regarded as not worth while.
The fact is, nothing great or enduring in music has ever sprung
full-fledged from the brain of any master; the best he gives the world he
gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of
his genius.
Ragtime deserves serious attention. There is a lot of colorless and
vicious imitation, but there is enough that is genuine. In one composition
alone, "The Memphis Blues," the musician will find not only great melodic
beauty, but a polyphonic structure that is amazing.
It is obvious that Ragtime has influenced, and in a large measure,
become our popular music; but not many would know that it has influenced
even our religious music. Those who are familiar with gospel hymns can at
once see this influence if they will compare the songs of thirty years
ago, such as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," "The Ninety and Nine," etc., with
the up-to-date, syncopated tunes that are sung in Sunday Schools,
Christian Endeavor Societies, Y.M.C.A.'s and like gatherings to-day.
Ragtime has not only influenced American music, it has influenced American
life; indeed, it has saturated American life. It has become the popular
medium for our national expression musically. And who can say that it does
not express the blare and jangle and the surge, too, of our national
spirit?
Any one who doubts that there is a peculiar heel-tickling,
smile-provoking, joy-awakening, response-compelling charm in Ragtime needs
only to hear a skilful performer play the genuine article, needs only to
listen to its bizarre harmonies, its audacious resolutions often
consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, its intricate
rhythms in which the accents fall in the most unexpected places but in
which the fundamental beat is never lost in order to be convinced. I
believe it has its place as well as the music which draws from us sighs
and tears.
Now, these dances which I have referred to and Ragtime music may be lower
forms of art, but they are evidence of a power that will some day be
applied to the higher forms. And even now we need not stop at the Negro's
accomplishment through these lower forms. In the "spirituals," or slave
songs, the Negro has given America not only its only folksongs, but a mass
of noble music. I never think of this music but that I am struck by the
wonder, the miracle of its production. How did the men who originated
these songs manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for; they
are, for the most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies, where did
they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so wonderfully
strong. Take, for instance, "Go Down, Moses"; I doubt that there is a
stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world.
[Illustration: Music (Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my
people go. Go down, Mo-ses, way down in E-gypt land, Tell ole Pha-raoh,
Let my people go.)]
It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is
rhythm, the chief characteristic of the "spirituals" is melody. The
melodies of "Steal Away to Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody
Knows de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," "Deep River," "O,
Freedom Over Me," and many others of these songs possess a beauty that
is--what shall I say? poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the
Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the sheer
joy of living; in the "spirituals" he voiced his sense of beauty and his
deep religious feeling.
Naturally, not as much can be said for the words of these songs as for the
music. Most of the songs are religious. Some of them are songs expressing
faith and endurance and a longing for freedom. In the religious songs, the
sentiments and often the entire lines are taken bodily from the Bible.
However, there is no doubt that some of these religious songs have a
meaning apart from the Biblical text. It is evident that the opening lines
of "Go Down, Moses,"
"Go down, Moses,
'Way down in Egypt land;
Tell old Pharoah,
Let my people go."
have a significance beyond the bondage of Israel in Egypt.
The bulk of the lines to these songs, as is the case in all communal
music, is made up of choral iteration and incremental repetition of the
leader's lines. If the words are read, this constant iteration and
repetition are found to be tiresome; and it must be admitted that the
lines themselves are often very trite. And, yet, there is frequently
revealed a flash of real, primitive poetry. I give the following examples:
"Sometimes I feel like an eagle in de air."
"You may bury me in de East,
You may bury me in de West,
But I'll hear de trumpet sound
In-a dat mornin'."
"I know de moonlight, I know de starlight;
I lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight;
I lay dis body down.
I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard,
When I lay dis body down.
I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard
To lay dis body down.
I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms;
I lay dis body down.
I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day
When I lay dis body down.
An' my soul an' yo' soul will meet in de day
When I lay dis body down."
Regarding the line, "I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms," Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston, one of the first to give these slave
songs serious study, said: "Never it seems to me, since man first lived
and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively
than in that line."
These Negro folksongs constitute a vast mine of material that has been
neglected almost absolutely. The only white writers who have in recent
years given adequate attention and study to this music, that I know of,
are Mr. H.E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin. We have our native
composers denying the worth and importance of this music, and trying to
manufacture grand opera out of so-called Indian themes.
But there is a great hope for the development of this music, and that hope
is the Negro himself. A worthy beginning has already been made by
Burleigh, Cook, Johnson, and Dett. And there will yet come great Negro
composers who will take this music and voice through it not only the soul
of their race, but the soul of America.
And does it not seem odd that this greatest gift of the Negro has been the
most neglected of all he possesses? Money and effort have been expended
upon his development in every direction except this. This gift has been
regarded as a kind of side show, something for occasional exhibition;
wherein it is the touchstone, it is the magic thing, it is that by which
the Negro can bridge all chasms. No persons, however hostile, can listen
to Negroes singing this wonderful music without having their hostility
melted down.
This power of the Negro to suck up the national spirit from the soil and
create something artistic and original, which, at the same time, possesses
the note of universal appeal, is due to a remarkable racial gift of
adaptability; it is more than adaptability, it is a transfusive quality.
And the Negro has exercised this transfusive quality not only here in
America, where the race lives in large numbers, but in European countries,
where the number has been almost infinitesimal.
Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of Russia is Alexander
Pushkin, a man of African descent; that the greatest romancer of France
is Alexander Dumas, a man of African descent; and that one of the greatest
musicians of England is Coleridge-Taylor, a man of African descent?
The fact is fairly well known that the father of Dumas was a Negro of
the French West Indies, and that the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a
native-born African; but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ancestry
are not so familiar.
When Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with
a full-blooded Negro of gigantic size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of
modern times, dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him
Hannibal, and made him a special body-guard.
But Hannibal had more than size, he had brain and ability. He not only
looked picturesque and imposing in soldier clothes, he showed that he had
in him the making of a real soldier. Peter recognized this, and eventually
made him a general. He afterwards ennobled him, and Hannibal, later,
married one of the ladies of the Russian court. This same Hannibal was
great-grandfather of Pushkin, the national poet of Russia, the man who
bears the same relation to Russian literature that Shakespeare bears to
English literature.
I know the question naturally arises: If out of the few Negroes who have
lived in France there came a Dumas; and out of the few Negroes who have
lived in England there came a Coleridge-Taylor; and if from the man who
was at the time, probably, the only Negro in Russia there sprang that
country's national poet, why have not the millions of Negroes in the
United States with all the emotional and artistic endowment claimed for
them produced a Dumas, or a Coleridge-Taylor, or a Pushkin?
The question seems difficult, but there is an answer. The Negro in the
United States is consuming all of his intellectual energy in this
gruelling race-struggle. And the same statement may be made in a general
way about the white South. Why does not the white South produce literature
and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its intellectual energy
in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental efforts of the white
South run through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern white man
and all of his activities are impassably limited by the ever present Negro
problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken puts it, in all that vast
region, with its thirty or forty million people and its territory as large
as a half a dozen Frances or Germanys, there is not a single poet, not a
serious historian, not a creditable composer, not a critic good or bad,
not a dramatist dead or alive.
But, even so, the American Negro has accomplished something in pure
literature. The list of those who have done so would be surprising both by
its length and the excellence of the achievements. One of the great books
written in this country since the Civil War is the work of a colored man,
"The Souls of Black Folk," by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Such a list begins with Phillis Wheatley. In 1761 a slave ship landed a
cargo of slaves in Boston. Among them was a little girl seven or eight
years of age. She attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy
gentleman of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his wife. Mrs.
Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She noticed the girl's quick mind and
determined to give her opportunity for its development. Twelve years later
Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was brought out in London,
where Phillis was for several months an object of great curiosity and
attention.
Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful place in American
literature. By some sort of conspiracy she is kept out of most of the
books, especially the text-books on literature used in the schools. Of
course, she is not a _great_ American poet--and in her day there were
no great American poets--but she is an important American poet. Her
importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she
is the first in order of time of all the women poets of America. And she
is among the first of all American poets to issue a volume.
It seems strange that the books generally give space to a mention of Urian
Oakes, President of Harvard College, and to quotations from the crude and
lengthy elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples from the
execrable versified version of the Psalms made by the New England divines,
and yet deny a place to Phillis Wheatley.
Here are the opening lines from the elegy by Oakes, which is quoted from
in most of the books on American literature:
"Reader, I am no poet, but I grieve.
Behold here what that passion can do,
That forced a verse without Apollo's leave,
And whether the learned sisters would or no."
There was no need for Urian to admit what his handiwork declared. But this
from the versified Psalms is still worse, yet it is found in the books:
"The Lord's song sing can we? being
in stranger's land, then let
lose her skill my right hand if I
Jerusalem forget."
Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little over twenty years.
She published her volume of poems, "The Tenth Muse," in 1750. Let us
strike a comparison between the two. Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy,
cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Bay
Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us
take them both at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza is
from Anne's poem entitled "Contemplation":
"While musing thus with contemplation fed,
And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,
The sweet tongued Philomel percht o'er my head,
And chanted forth a most melodious strain,
Which rapt me so with wonder and delight,
I judged my hearing better than my sight,
And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight."
And the following is from Phillis' poem entitled "Imagination":
"Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
The empyreal palace of the thundering God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind,
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above,
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul."
We do not think the black woman suffers much by comparison with the white.
Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis: "Religion has produced a Phillis
Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet; her poems are beneath
contempt." It is quite likely that Jefferson's criticism was directed more
against religion than against Phillis' poetry. On the other hand, General
George Washington wrote her with his own hand a letter in which he thanked
her for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later, received her
with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge.
It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to apply to George
Washington the phrase, "First in peace." The phrase occurs in her poem
addressed to "His Excellency, General George Washington," written in 1775.
The encomium, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his
countrymen" was originally used in the resolutions presented to Congress
on the death of Washington, December, 1799.
Phillis Wheatley's poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth Century. She
wrote when Pope and Gray were supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her
model. Had she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or Keats or
Shelley, she would have done greater work. As it is, her work must not be
judged by the work and standards of a later day, but by the work and
standards of her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method of
criticism she stands out as one of the important characters in the making
of American literature, without any allowances for her sex or her
antecedents.
According to "A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry,"
compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, more than one hundred Negroes in the
United States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size from
pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three hundred pages. About
thirty of these writers fill in the gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul
Laurence Dunbar. Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote
and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in this country from
Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of
Queens-Village, Long Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight
lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with
Penettential Cries." In 1788 he published "An Address to Miss Phillis
Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years
of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ." These
two poems do not include all that Hammon wrote.
The poets between Phillis Wheatley and Dunbar must be considered more in
the light of what they attempted than of what they accomplished. Many of
them showed marked talent, but barely a half dozen of them demonstrated
even mediocre mastery of technique in the use of poetic material and
forms. And yet there are several names that deserve mention. George M.
Horton, Frances E. Harper, James M. Bell and Alberry A. Whitman, all merit
consideration when due allowances are made for their limitations in
education, training and general culture. The limitations of Horton were
greater than those of either of the others; he was born a slave in North
Carolina in 1797, and as a young man began to compose poetry without being
able to write it down. Later he received some instruction from professors
of the University of North Carolina, at which institution he was employed
as a janitor. He published a volume of poems, "The Hope of Liberty," in
1829.
Mrs. Harper, Bell and Whitman would stand out if only for the reason that
each of them attempted sustained work. Mrs. Harper published her first
volume of poems in 1854, but later she published "Moses, a Story of the
Nile," a poem which ran to 52 closely printed pages. Bell in 1864
published a poem of 28 pages in celebration of President Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation. In 1870 he published a poem of 32 pages in
celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. Whitman published his first volume of poems, a book of 253
pages, in 1877; but in 1884 he published "The Rape of Florida," an epic
poem written in four cantos and done in the Spenserian stanza, and which
ran to 97 closely printed pages. The poetry of both Mrs. Harper and of
Whitman had a large degree of popularity; one of Mrs. Harper's books went
through more than twenty editions.
Of these four poets, it is Whitman who reveals not only the greatest
imagination but also the more skilful workmanship. His lyric power at its
best may be judged from the following stanza from the "Rape of Florida":
"'Come now, my love, the moon is on the lake;
Upon the waters is my light canoe;
Come with me, love, and gladsome oars shall make
A music on the parting wave for you.
Come o'er the waters deep and dark and blue;
Come where the lilies in the marge have sprung,
Come with me, love, for Oh, my love is true!'
This is the song that on the lake was sung,
The boatman sang it when his heart was young."
Some idea of Whitman's capacity for dramatic narration may be gained from
the following lines taken from "Not a Man, and Yet a Man," a poem of even
greater length than "The Rape of Florida":
"A flash of steely lightning from his hand,
Strikes down the groaning leader of the band;
Divides his startled comrades, and again
Descending, leaves fair Dora's captors slain.
Her, seizing then within a strong embrace,
Out in the dark he wheels his flying pace;
He speaks not, but with stalwart tenderness
Her swelling bosom firm to his doth press;
Springs like a stag that flees the eager hound,
And like a whirlwind rustles o'er the ground.
Her locks swim in dishevelled wildness o'er
His shoulders, streaming to his waist and more;
While on and on, strong as a rolling flood,
His sweeping footsteps part the silent wood."
It is curious and interesting to trace the growth of individuality and
race consciousness in this group of poets. Jupiter Hammon's verses were
almost entirely religious exhortations. Only very seldom does Phillis
Wheatley sound a native note. Four times in single lines she refers to
herself as "Afric's muse." In a poem of admonition addressed to the
students at the "University of Cambridge in New England" she refers to
herself as follows:
"Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe."
But one looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint against the
bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In
two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each
instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of
almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, "On
Being Brought from Africa to America," she says:
"'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God and there's a Saviour too;
Once I redemption neither sought or knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
'Their color is a diabolic dye.'
Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain,
May be refined, and join th' angelic train."
In the poem addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, she speaks of freedom and
makes a reference to the parents from whom she was taken as a child, a
reference which cannot but strike the reader as rather unimpassioned:
"Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood;
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat;
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labor in my parents' breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd;
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?"
The bulk of Phillis Wheatley's work consists of poems addressed to people
of prominence. Her book was dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, at
whose house she spent the greater part of her time while in England. On
his repeal of the Stamp Act, she wrote a poem to King George III, whom she
saw later; another poem she wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, whom she knew.
A number of her verses were addressed to other persons of distinction.
Indeed, it is apparent that Phillis was far from being a democrat. She was
far from being a democrat not only in her social ideas but also in her
political ideas; unless a religious meaning is given to the closing lines
of her ode to General Washington, she was a decided royalist:
"A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine
With gold unfading, Washington! be thine."
Nevertheless, she was an ardent patriot. Her ode to General Washington
(1775), her spirited poem, "On Major General Lee" (1776) and her poem,
"Liberty and Peace," written in celebration of the close of the war,
reveal not only strong patriotic feeling but an understanding of the
issues at stake. In her poem, "On Major General Lee," she makes her hero
reply thus to the taunts of the British commander into whose hands he has
been delivered through treachery:
"O arrogance of tongue!
And wild ambition, ever prone to wrong!
Believ'st thou, chief, that armies such as thine
Can stretch in dust that heaven-defended line?
In vain allies may swarm from distant lands,
And demons aid in formidable bands,
Great as thou art, thou shun'st the field of fame,
Disgrace to Britain and the British name!
When offer'd combat by the noble foe,
(Foe to misrule) why did the sword forego
The easy conquest of the rebel-land?
Perhaps TOO easy for thy martial hand.
What various causes to the field invite!
For plunder YOU, and we for freedom fight,
Her cause divine with generous ardor fires,
And every bosom glows as she inspires!
Already thousands of your troops have fled
To the drear mansions of the silent dead:
Columbia, too, beholds with streaming eyes
Her heroes fall--'tis freedom's sacrifice!
So wills the power who with convulsive storms
Shakes impious realms, and nature's face deforms;
Yet those brave troops, innum'rous as the sands,
One soul inspires, one General Chief commands;
Find in your train of boasted heroes, one
To match the praise of Godlike Washington.
Thrice happy Chief in whom the virtues join,
And heaven taught prudence speaks the man divine."
What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no small degree to her
education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her
verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid
thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known
Alexander Pope by heart. And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a
wealthy and cultured family,--a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she
never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true
relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten
that she was only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion or
the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out
on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But,
whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her.
Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's death, expressed
in all of his poetry strong complaint at his condition of slavery and a
deep longing for freedom. The following verses are typical of his style
and his ability:
"Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil, and pain?
* * * * *
Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears;
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears."
In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the complaint and the longing
of Horton. We find an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice. The
following stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women of America:
"You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
Who weeps in her desolate home.
You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
* * * * *
But hark! from our Southland are floating
Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
And women heart-stricken are weeping
O'er their tortured and slain.
* * * * *
Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
Just a plea, a prayer or a tear
For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
Of agony, hatred and fear?
* * * * *
Weep not, oh my well sheltered sisters,
Weep not for the Negro alone,
But weep for your sons who must gather
The crops which their fathers have sown."
Whitman, in the midst of "The Rape of Florida," a poem in which he related
the taking of the State of Florida from the Seminoles, stops and discusses
the race question. He discusses it in many other poems; and he discusses
it from many different angles. In Whitman we find not only an expression
of a sense of wrong and injustice, but we hear a note of faith and a note
also of defiance. For example, in the opening to Canto II of "The Rape of
Florida":
"Greatness by nature cannot be entailed;
It is an office ending with the man,--
Sage, hero, Saviour, tho' the Sire be hailed,
The son may reach obscurity in the van:
Sublime achievements know no patent plan,
Man's immortality's a book with seals,
And none but God shall open--none else can--
But opened, it the mystery reveals,--
Manhood's conquest of man to heaven's respect appeals.
"Is manhood less because man's face is black?
Let thunders of the loosened seals reply!
Who shall the rider's restive steed turn back,
Or who withstand the arrows he lets fly
Between the mountains of eternity?
Genius ride forth! Thou gift and torch of heav'n!
The mastery is kindled in thine eye;
To conquest ride! thy bow of strength is giv'n--
The trampled hordes of caste before thee shall be driv'n!
* * * * *
"'Tis hard to judge if hatred of one's race,
By those who deem themselves superior-born,
Be worse than that quiescence in disgrace,
Which only merits--and should only--scorn.
Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn,
Pressing and fighting in, for place and power!
All earth is place--all time th' auspicious hour,
While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he quail or cower?
"Ah! I abhor his protest and complaint!
His pious looks and patience I despise!
He can't evade the test, disguised as saint;
The manly voice of freedom bids him rise,
And shake himself before Philistine eyes!
And, like a lion roused, no sooner than
A foe dare come, play all his energies,
And court the fray with fury if he can;
For hell itself respects a fearless, manly man."
It may be said that none of these poets strike a deep native strain or
sound a distinctively original note, either in matter or form. That is
true; but the same thing may be said of all the American poets down to the
writers of the present generation, with the exception of Poe and Walt
Whitman. The thing in which these black poets are mostly excelled by their
contemporaries is mere technique.
Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in
the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and
poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote,
and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a
height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was
the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its
shortcomings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its
yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary
form.
Dunbar's fame rests chiefly on his poems in Negro dialect. This appraisal
of him is, no doubt, fair; for in these dialect poems he not only carried
his art to the highest point of perfection, but he made a contribution to
American literature unlike what any one else had made, a contribution
which, perhaps, no one else could have made. Of course, Negro dialect
poetry was written before Dunbar wrote, most of it by white writers; but
the fact stands out that Dunbar was the first to use it as a medium for
the true interpretation of Negro character and psychology. And, yet,
dialect poetry does not constitute the whole or even the bulk of Dunbar's
work. In addition to a large number of poems of a very high order done in
literary English, he was the author of four novels and several volumes of
short stories.
Indeed, Dunbar did not begin his career as a writer of dialect. I may be
pardoned for introducing here a bit of reminiscence. My personal
friendship with Paul Dunbar began before he had achieved recognition, and
continued to be close until his death. When I first met him he had
published a thin volume, "Oak and Ivy," which was being sold chiefly
through his own efforts. "Oak and Ivy" showed no distinctive Negro
influence, but rather the influence of James Whitcomb Riley. At this time
Paul and I were together every day for several months. He talked to me a
great deal about his hopes and ambitions. In these talks he revealed that
he had reached a realization of the possibilities of poetry in the
dialect, together with a recognition of the fact that it offered the
surest way by which he could get a hearing. Often he said to me: "I've
got to write dialect poetry; it's the only way I can get them to listen
to me." I was with Dunbar at the beginning of what proved to be his last
illness. He said to me then: "I have not grown. I am writing the same
things I wrote ten years ago, and am writing them no better." His
self-accusation was not fully true; he had grown, and he had gained a
surer control of his art, but he had not accomplished the greater things
of which he was constantly dreaming; the public had held him to the things
for which it had accorded him recognition. If Dunbar had lived he would
have achieved some of those dreams, but even while he talked so dejectedly
to me he seemed to feel that he was not to live. He died when he was only
thirty-three.
It has a bearing on this entire subject to note that Dunbar was of unmixed
Negro blood; so, as the greatest figure in literature which the colored
race in the United States has produced, he stands as an example at once
refuting and confounding those who wish to believe that whatever
extraordinary ability an Aframerican shows is due to an admixture of white
blood.
As a man, Dunbar was kind and tender. In conversation he was brilliant and
polished. His voice was his chief charm, and was a great element in his
success as a reader of his own works. In his actions he was impulsive as a
child, sometimes even erratic; indeed, his intimate friends almost looked
upon him as a spoiled boy. He was always delicate in health.
Temperamentally, he belonged to that class of poets who Taine says are
vessels too weak to contain the spirit of poetry, the poets whom poetry
kills, the Byrons, the Burns's, the De Mussets, the Poes.
To whom may he be compared, this boy who scribbled his early verses while
he ran an elevator, whose youth was a battle against poverty, and who, in
spite of almost insurmountable obstacles, rose to success? A comparison
between him and Burns is not unfitting. The similarity between many phases
of their lives is remarkable, and their works are not incommensurable.
Burns took the strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar
took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought music.
Mention of Dunbar brings up for consideration the fact that, although he
is the most outstanding figure in literature among the Aframericans of the
United States, he does not stand alone among the Aframericans of the whole
Western world. There are Plácido and Manzano in Cuba; Vieux and Durand in
Haiti, Machado de Assis in Brazil; Leon Laviaux in Martinique, and others
still that might be mentioned, who stand on a plane with or even above
Dunbar. Plácido and Machado de Assis rank as great in the literatures of
their respective countries without any qualifications whatever. They are
world figures in the literature of the Latin languages. Machado de Assis
is somewhat handicapped in this respect by having as his tongue and medium
the lesser known Portuguese, but Plácido, writing in the language of
Spain, Mexico, Cuba and of almost the whole of South America, is
universally known. His works have been republished in the original in
Spain, Mexico and in most of the Latin-American countries; several
editions have been published in the United States; translations of his
works have been made into French and German.
Plácido is in some respects the greatest of all the Cuban poets. In sheer
genius and the fire of inspiration he surpasses even the more finished
Heredia. Then, too, his birth, his life and his death ideally contained
the tragic elements that go into the making of a halo about a poet's head.
Plácido was born in Habana in 1809. The first months of his life were
passed in a foundling asylum; indeed, his real name, Gabriel de la
Concepcion Valdés, was in honor of its founder. His father took him out of
the asylum, but shortly afterwards went to Mexico and died there. His
early life was a struggle against poverty; his youth and manhood was a
struggle for Cuban independence. His death placed him in the list of Cuban
martyrs. On the 27th of June, 1844, he was lined up against a wall with
ten others and shot by order of the Spanish authorities on a charge of
conspiracy. In his short but eventful life he turned out work which bulks
more than six hundred pages. During the few hours preceding his execution
he wrote three of his best known poems, among them his famous sonnet,
"Mother, Farewell!"
Plácido's sonnet to his mother has been translated into every important
language; William Cullen Bryant did it in English; but in spite of its
wide popularity, it is, perhaps, outside of Cuba the least understood of
all Plácido's poems. It is curious to note how Bryant's translation
totally misses the intimate sense of the delicate subtility of the poem.
The American poet makes it a tender and loving farewell of a son who is
about to die to a heart-broken mother; but that is not the kind of a
farewell that Plácido intended to write or did write.
The key to the poem is in the first word, and the first word is the
Spanish conjunction _Si_ (if). The central idea, then, of the sonnet
is, "If the sad fate which now overwhelms me should bring a pang to your
heart, do not weep, for I die a glorious death and sound the last note of
my lyre to you." Bryant either failed to understand or ignored the opening
word, "If," because he was not familiar with the poet's history.
While Plácido's father was a Negro, his mother was a Spanish white woman,
a dancer in one of the Habana theatres. At his birth she abandoned him to
a foundling asylum, and perhaps never saw him again, although it is known
that she outlived her son. When the poet came down to his last hours he
remembered that somewhere there lived a woman who was his mother; that
although she had heartlessly abandoned him; that although he owed her no
filial duty, still she might, perhaps, on hearing of his sad end feel some
pang of grief or sadness; so he tells her in his last words that he dies
happy and bids her not to weep. This he does with nobility and dignity,
but absolutely without affection. Taking into account these facts, and
especially their humiliating and embittering effect upon a soul so
sensitive as Plácido's, this sonnet, in spite of the obvious weakness of
the sestet as compared with the octave, is a remarkable piece of work.[1]
[Footnote 1: Plácido's sonnet and two English versions will be found in
the Appendix.]
In considering the Aframerican poets of the Latin languages I am impelled
to think that, as up to this time the colored poets of greater
universality have come out of the Latin-American countries rather than out
of the United States, they will continue to do so for a good many years.
The reason for this I hinted at in the first part of this preface. The
colored poet in the United States labors within limitations which he
cannot easily pass over. He is always on the defensive or the offensive.
The pressure upon him to be propagandic is well nigh irresistible. These
conditions are suffocating to breadth and to real art in poetry. In
addition he labors under the handicap of finding culture not entirely
colorless in the United States. On the other hand, the colored poet of
Latin-America can voice the national spirit without any reservations. And
he will be rewarded without any reservations, whether it be to place him
among the great or declare him the greatest.
So I think it probable that the first world-acknowledged Aframerican poet
will come out of Latin-America. Over against this probability, of course,
is the great advantage possessed by the colored poet in the United States
of writing in the world-conquering English language.
This preface has gone far beyond what I had in mind when I started. It was
my intention to gather together the best verses I could find by Negro
poets and present them with a bare word of introduction. It was not my
plan to make this collection inclusive nor to make the book in any sense a
book of criticism. I planned to present only verses by contemporary
writers; but, perhaps, because this is the first collection of its kind, I
realized the absence of a starting-point and was led to provide one and to
fill in with historical data what I felt to be a gap.
It may be surprising to many to see how little of the poetry being written
by Negro poets to-day is being written in Negro dialect. The newer Negro
poets show a tendency to discard dialect; much of the subject-matter which
went into the making of traditional dialect poetry, 'possums, watermelons,
etc., they have discarded altogether, at least, as poetic material. This
tendency will, no doubt, be regretted by the majority of white readers;
and, indeed, it would be a distinct loss if the American Negro poets threw
away this quaint and musical folk-speech as a medium of expression. And
yet, after all, these poets are working through a problem not realized by
the reader, and, perhaps, by many of these poets themselves not realized
consciously. They are trying to break away from, not Negro dialect itself,
but the limitations on Negro dialect imposed by the fixing effects of long
convention.
The Negro in the United States has achieved or been placed in a certain
artistic niche. When he is thought of artistically, it is as a
happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or
less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of
cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long
association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and
by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor
and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the
Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the
United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or
artistically. Take, for example, the phases rising out of life in Harlem,
that most wonderful Negro city in the world. I do not deny that a Negro in
a log cabin is more picturesque than a Negro in a Harlem flat, but the
Negro in the Harlem flat is here, and he is but part of a group growing
everywhere in the country, a group whose ideals are becoming increasingly
more vital than those of the traditionally artistic group, even if its
members are less picturesque.
What the colored poet in the United States needs to do is something like
what Synge did for the Irish; he needs to find a form that will express
the racial spirit by symbols from within rather than by symbols from
without, such as the mere mutilation of English spelling and
pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer and larger than dialect, but
which will still hold the racial flavor; a form expressing the imagery,
the idioms, the peculiar turns of thought, and the distinctive humor and
pathos, too, of the Negro, but which will also be capable of voicing the
deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allow of the widest
range of subjects and the widest scope of treatment.
Negro dialect is at present a medium that is not capable of giving
expression to the varied conditions of Negro life in America, and much
less is it capable of giving the fullest interpretation of Negro character
and psychology. This is no indictment against the dialect as dialect, but
against the mould of convention in which Negro dialect in the United
States has been set. In time these conventions may become lost, and the
colored poet in the United States may sit down to write in dialect without
feeling that his first line will put the general reader in a frame of mind
which demands that the poem be humorous or pathetic. In the meantime,
there is no reason why these poets should not continue to do the beautiful
things that can be done, and done best, in the dialect.
In stating the need for Aframerican poets in the United States to work out
a new and distinctive form of expression I do not wish to be understood to
hold any theory that they should limit themselves to Negro poetry, to
racial themes; the sooner they are able to write _American_ poetry
spontaneously, the better. Nevertheless, I believe that the richest
contribution the Negro poet can make to the American literature of the
future will be the fusion into it of his own individual artistic gifts.
Not many of the writers here included, except Dunbar, are known at all to
the general reading public; and there is only one of these who has a
widely recognized position in the American literary world, he is William
Stanley Braithwaite. Mr. Braithwaite is not only unique in this respect,
but he stands unique among all the Aframerican writers the United States
has yet produced. He has gained his place, taking as the standard and
measure for his work the identical standard and measure applied to
American writers and American literature. He has asked for no allowances
or rewards, either directly or indirectly, on account of his race.
Mr. Braithwaite is the author of two volumes of verses, lyrics of delicate
and tenuous beauty. In his more recent and uncollected poems he shows
himself more and more decidedly the mystic. But his place in American
literature is due more to his work as a critic and anthologist than to his
work as a poet. There is still another role he has played, that of friend
of poetry and poets. It is a recognized fact that in the work which
preceded the present revival of poetry in the United States, no one
rendered more unremitting and valuable service than Mr. Braithwaite. And
it can be said that no future study of American poetry of this age can be
made without reference to Braithwaite.
Two authors included in the book are better known for their work in prose
than in poetry: W.E.B. Du Bois whose well-known prose at its best is,
however, impassioned and rhythmical; and Benjamin Brawley who is the
author, among other works, of one of the best handbooks on the English
drama that has yet appeared in America.
But the group of the new Negro poets, whose work makes up the bulk of this
anthology, contains names destined to be known. Claude McKay, although
still quite a young man, has already demonstrated his power, breadth and
skill as a poet. Mr. McKay's breadth is as essential a part of his
equipment as his power and skill. He demonstrates mastery of the three
when as a Negro poet he pours out the bitterness and rebellion in his
heart in those two sonnet-tragedies, "If We Must Die" and "To the White
Fiends," in a manner that strikes terror; and when as a cosmic poet he
creates the atmosphere and mood of poetic beauty in the absolute, as he
does in "Spring in New Hampshire" and "The Harlem Dancer." Mr. McKay gives
evidence that he has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of the
new Negro poets--the danger of allowing the purely polemical phases of the
race problem to choke their sense of artistry.
Mr. McKay's earliest work is unknown in this country. It consists of poems
written and published in his native Jamaica. I was fortunate enough to run
across this first volume, and I could not refrain from reproducing here
one of the poems written in the West Indian Negro dialect. I have done
this not only to illustrate the widest range of the poet's talent and to
offer a comparison between the American and the West Indian dialects, but
on account of the intrinsic worth of the poem itself. I was much tempted
to introduce several more, in spite of the fact that they might require a
glossary, because however greater work Mr. McKay may do he can never do
anything more touching and charming than these poems in the Jamaica
dialect.
Fenton Johnson is a young poet of the ultra-modern school who gives
promise of greater work than he has yet done. Jessie Fauset shows that she
possesses the lyric gift, and she works with care and finish. Miss Fauset
is especially adept in her translations from the French. Georgia Douglas
Johnson is a poet neither afraid nor ashamed of her emotions. She limits
herself to the purely conventional forms, rhythms and rhymes, but through
them she achieves striking effects. The principal theme of Mrs. Johnson's
poems is the secret dread down in every woman's heart, the dread of the
passing of youth and beauty, and with them love. An old theme, one which
poets themselves have often wearied of, but which, like death, remains one
of the imperishable themes on which is made the poetry that has moved
men's hearts through all ages. In her ingenuously wrought verses, through
sheer simplicity and spontaneousness, Mrs. Johnson often sounds a note of
pathos or passion that will not fail to waken a response, except in those
too sophisticated or cynical to respond to natural impulses. Of the half
dozen or so of colored women writing creditable verse, Anne Spencer is the
most modern and least obvious in her methods. Her lines are at times
involved and turgid and almost cryptic, but she shows an originality which
does not depend upon eccentricities. In her "Before the Feast of Shushan"
she displays an opulence, the love of which has long been charged against
the Negro as one of his naïve and childish traits, but which in art may
infuse a much needed color, warmth and spirit of abandon into American
poetry.
John W. Holloway, more than any Negro poet writing in the dialect to-day,
summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar
was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say
a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect,
Campbell was a precursor of Dunbar. A comparison of his idioms and
phonetics with those of Dunbar reveals great differences. Dunbar is a
shade or two more sophisticated and his phonetics approach nearer to a
mean standard of the dialects spoken in the different sections. Campbell
is more primitive and his phonetics are those of the dialect as spoken by
the Negroes of the sea islands off the coasts of South Carolina and
Georgia, which to this day remains comparatively close to its African
roots, and is strikingly similar to the speech of the uneducated Negroes
of the West Indies. An error that confuses many persons in reading or
understanding Negro dialect is the idea that it is uniform. An ignorant
Negro of the uplands of Georgia would have almost as much difficulty in
understanding an ignorant sea island Negro as an Englishman would have.
Not even in the dialect of any particular section is a given word always
pronounced in precisely the same way. Its pronunciation depends upon the
preceding and following sounds. Sometimes the combination permits of a
liaison so close that to the uninitiated the sound of the word is almost
completely lost.
The constant effort in Negro dialect is to elide all troublesome
consonants and sounds. This negative effort may be after all only positive
laziness of the vocal organs, but the result is a softening and smoothing
which makes Negro dialect so delightfully easy for singers.
Daniel Webster Davis wrote dialect poetry at the time when Dunbar was
writing. He gained great popularity, but it did not spread beyond his own
race. Davis had unctuous humor, but he was crude. For illustration, note
the vast stretch between his "Hog Meat" and Dunbar's "When de Co'n Pone's
Hot," both of them poems on the traditional ecstasy of the Negro in
contemplation of "good things" to eat.
It is regrettable that two of the most gifted writers included were cut
off so early in life. R. C. Jamison and Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., died
several years ago, both of them in their youth. Jamison was barely thirty
at the time of his death, but among his poems there is one, at least,
which stamps him as a poet of superior talent and lofty inspiration. "The
Negro Soldiers" is a poem with the race problem as its theme, yet it
transcends the limits of race and rises to a spiritual height that makes
it one of the noblest poems of the Great War. Cotter died a mere boy of
twenty, and the latter part of that brief period he passed in an invalid
state. Some months before his death he published a thin volume of verses
which were for the most part written on a sick bed. In this little volume
Cotter showed fine poetic sense and a free and bold mastery over his
material. A reading of Cotter's poems is certain to induce that mood in
which one will regretfully speculate on what the young poet might have
accomplished had he not been cut off so soon.
As intimated above, my original idea for this book underwent a change in
the writing of the introduction. I first planned to select twenty-five to
thirty poems which I judged to be up to a certain standard, and offer them
with a few words of introduction and without comment. In the collection,
as it grew to be, that "certain standard" has been broadened if not
lowered; but I believe that this is offset by the advantage of the wider
range given the reader and the student of the subject.
I offer this collection without making apology or asking allowance. I feel
confident that the reader will find not only an earnest for the future,
but actual achievement. The reader cannot but be impressed by the distance
already covered. It is a long way from the plaints of George Horton to the
invectives of Claude McKay, from the obviousness of Frances Harper to the
complexness of Anne Spencer. Much ground has been covered, but more will
yet be covered. It is this side of prophecy to declare that the undeniable
creative genius of the Negro is destined to make a distinctive and
valuable contribution to American poetry.
I wish to extend my thanks to Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, who placed his
valuable collection of books by Negro authors at my disposal. I wish also
to acknowledge with thanks the kindness of Dodd, Mead & Co. for permitting
the reprint of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar; of the Cornhill Publishing
Company for permission to reprint poems of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Joseph
S. Cotter, Jr., Bertram Johnson and Waverley Carmichael; and of Neale &
Co. for permission to reprint poems of John W. Holloway. I wish to thank
Mr. Braithwaite for permission to use the included poems from his
forthcoming volume, "Sandy Star and Willie Gee." And to acknowledge the
courtesy of the following magazines: _The Crisis, The Century Magazine,
The Liberator, The Freeman, The Independent, Others_, and _Poetry: A
Magazine of Verse_.
James Weldon Johnson.
New York City, 1921.