If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.
I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.
Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.
The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.
[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.
Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.