James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938). The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922.
Preface
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 Tonight”; 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:
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 skillful 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 folk songs, 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.
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 folk songs 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 grueling
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. Dubois.
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 skillful 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 Havana 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 Havana 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. [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 naive 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
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