“I shall not write of negro subjects for the purpose of propaganda. That is not what a poet is concerned with. Of course, when the emotion rising out of the fact that I am a negro is strong, I express it. But that is another matter.”

Distinguishes felt racial emotion from writing verse as racial propaganda · Interview, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10 February 1924

• Honesty
• Poetry
• Race

“Negro poetry, it seems to me, in the sense that we speak of Russian, French, or Chinese poetry, must emanate from some country other than this in some language other than our own.”

Argues that American English, not a separate racial tongue, is the medium of Black American verse · Foreword, Caroling Dusk, 1927

• America
• Language
• Poetry

“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