If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover.

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.

[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.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind