“They tend to hurl this poet into the gaping pit that lies before all Negro writers, in the confines of which they become racial artists instead of artists pure and simple.”

Warns that a solely racial pose can trap a writer short of the universal · Review of Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, The Dark Tower, 1926

• Artists
• Criticism
• Race

“As heretical as it may sound, there is the probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English language, may have more to gain from the rich background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African inheritance.”

Prefers the inherited English lyric tradition over a reconstructed African poetic past · Foreword, Caroling Dusk, 1927

• Language
• Poetry
• Tradition

“There may have been many things in my life that have hurt me, and I find that the surest relief from these hurts is in writing.”

Treats composition as a practical remedy for private and public wounds · Remark, 1926, as quoted by Stephen H. Bronz

• Healing
• Pain
• Writing