Ad astra per aspera—that is the old Roman adage. Magnificent is it, and magnificently is it being in these days exemplified by the American Negroes, particularly by the increasing number of educated and talented American Negroes, and most particularly by those who feel the urge to express in song the emotions and aspirations of their people. A surprisingly large number is this class. Without exhausting the possibilities of selection I have quoted in this anthology of contemporary Negro poetry sixty odd writers of tolerable verse that exhibits, besides form, at least one fundamental quality of poetry, namely, passion.

The mere number, large as it is, would of course not signify by itself. Nor does the phrase “tolerable verse,” cautiously chosen, seem to promise much. What this multitude means, and whether the verse be worthy of a more complimentary description, I leave to the reader’s judgment. Quality of expression and character of content are of course the prepotent considerations.

While, in a preliminary section, I have passed in review the poetry of the Negro up to and including Dunbar, not neglecting the old religious songs of the plantation, or “Spirituals,” and the dance, play, and nursery rhymes, or “Seculars,” yet strictly speaking this is a representation of new Negro voices, an anthology of present-day Negro verse, with biographical items and critical, or at least appreciative comment.

I wish most heartily to express my obligations to the publishers and authors of the volumes I have drawn upon for selections. They are named in the Index and Biographical and Bibliographical Notes at the end of the text. But for the reader’s convenience I collect their names here:

Richard E. Badger, publisher of Walter Everette Hawkins’s Chords and Discords; A. B. Caldwell, Atlanta, Ga., publisher of Sterling M. Means’ The Deserted Cabin and Other Poems; the Cornhill Company, publishers of Waverley Turner Carmichael’s From the Heart of a Folk; Joseph S. Cotter’s The Band of Gideon; Georgia Douglas Johnson’s The Heart of a Woman; Charles Bertram Johnson’s Songs of My People; James Weldon Johnson’s Fifty Years and Other Poems; Joshua Henry Jones’s Poems of the Four Seas; Dodd, Mead and Company, publishers of Dunbar’s Poems; the Grafton Press, publishers of H. Cordelia Ray’s Poems; Harcourt, Brace & Company, publishers of W. E. Burghardt DuBois’s Darkwater; Pritchard and Ovington’s The Upward Path; the Macmillan Company, publishers of Thomas W. Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes; the Neale Publishing Company, publishers of Kelley Miller’s Out of the House of Bondage; J. L. Nichols & Company, Naperville, Ill., publishers of Mrs. Dunbar-Nelson’s The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, and The Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar; the Stratford Company, publishers of Joshua Henry Jones’s The Heart of the World and Other Poems; and Leslie Pinckney Hill’s The Wings of Oppression. It is with their kind permission I am privileged to use selections from the books named. To The Crisis, The Favorite Magazine, and The Messenger, I am indebted for several selections, which I gratefully acknowledge.

To readers who are disposed to study the poetry of the Negro I would commend Dr. James Weldon Johnson’s The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) and Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg’s A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry (Charles F. Hartman, New York). I am indebted to both these books and authors. To Mr. Schomburg I am also indebted for the loan of many of the pictures of the earlier poets.

R. T. K.

West Chester, Pa.
March 22, 1923.

NEGRO POETS AND
THEIR POEMS