If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.
Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.
Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.
For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.
We shall not always plant while others reap
[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.