“Indeed, the Negro novel is one of the great potentialities of American literature.”

Expressing confidence in the future importance of Black American fiction · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Culture
• Hope
• Literature

“Negro poetic expression hovers for the moment, pardonably perhaps, over the race problem, but its highest allegiance is to Poetry—it must soar.”

Arguing that poetry can arise from social struggle while aspiring beyond immediate circumstance · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Struggle

“With each new figure somehow the gamut broadens and the technical control improves.”

Seeing literary development as both an expansion of range and an increase in craftsmanship · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Growth
• Poetry
• Skill

“Here a new literary generation begins; poetry that is racial in substance, but with the universal note, with the conscious background of the full heritage of English poetry.”

Describing a generation joining particular cultural experience with universal poetic expression · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Identity
• Poetry
• Tradition

“From his very beginning in this country the Negro has been, without the formal recognition of literature and art, creative.”

Affirming a creative tradition that existed long before receiving institutional recognition · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Art
• Creativity
• History

“Only gradually through the dull purgatory of the Age of Discussion, has Negro life eventually issued forth to an Age of Expression.”

Describing the movement from being discussed by others towards creative self-expression · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Freedom
• Identity
• Literature

“The sense that one gets in all that has been written about Emily Dickinson during the year is, not that she is a smaller star in the literary heavens than Whitman, but of a greater distance from the eye.”

Suggesting that neglected genius may be distant from recognition rather than lesser in stature · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Criticism
• Fame
• Poetry

“No one can deny that here indeed was the key for large imaginings and energies which were capable of intensifying vision on a new plane of human experience.”

Celebrating poetry's capacity to enlarge imaginative and human experience · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Experience
• Imagination
• Poetry

“The currents of song came from every source from which the national character was forming; all, more or less, striving to present a unified consciousness of native art.”

Presenting poetry as an expression of many cultural currents within a nation · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Culture
• Identity
• Poetry

“These new talents were new roots in a soil not too richly fertilized by the chemistry of original song.”

Using organic imagery to describe the emergence of new American poets · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Growth
• Originality
• Poetry

“There is an influence more mystical than the average critic gives credit for being which is reshaping the foundation of our poetic ideals and visions.”

Recognising cultural forces in poetry that resist straightforward critical explanation · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Criticism
• Mystery
• Poetry

“I come to no conclusion as to what is to-day, or what may be to-morrow, American poetry.”

Accepting that literary traditions remain unsettled and continually evolving · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Change
• Humility
• Poetry

“It is the superficial belief of some critics that American poetry has its ideal and embodiment in Walt Whitman.”

Warning against reducing a national poetic tradition to a single representative figure · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Tradition

“It is not intellect that has brought this about; less has it been due to education; it has been due to character and character is the expression of habits and ideas.”

Emphasising the formative power of inherited habits and shared ideas · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Character
• Culture
• Education

“I suppose that any art may be considered American which conforms in expression to the ideals of the American people.”

Considering the relationship between artistic expression and national ideals · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Art
• Culture
• Identity

“What makes an American poetry is a question that has never been and can never be solved by criticism.”

Questioning whether national literary identity can ever be neatly defined · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Criticism
• Identity
• Poetry

“The poets are doing satisfying and vitally excellent work, and it only remains for the American public to do its duty by showing a substantial appreciation.”

Calling upon the reading public to recognise and support contemporary poets · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913

• Community
• Poetry
• Reading

“Our poetry needs, more than anything else, encouragement and support, to reveal its qualities.”

Arguing that poetry flourishes when readers actively value and sustain it · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913

• Community
• Poetry
• Support