The play is done, the crowds depart; and see / That twisted tortured thing hung from a tree, / Swart victim of a newer Calvary.

My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

The key to all strange things is in thy heart…./ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call the “breaks.” In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things — read and write — and...

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

I have a rendezvous with life.

And if I please you so, my lover,Remember praise is comely.

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

Your love to me was like an unread book . . .

Your love to me was like an unread book.

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

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

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

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...