Caroling dusk : $b an anthology of verse by Negro poets

African Americans -- Poetry; American poetry -- African American authors

There are lights and shades of difference even in their
methods of decrying race injustices, where these peculiar
experiences of Negro life cannot be overlooked.
Claude McKay is most exercised, rebellious, and
vituperative to a degree that clouds his lyricism in many
instances, but silhouettes most forcibly his high dudgeon;
while neither Arna Bontemps, at all times cool,
calm, and intensely religious, nor Georgia Douglas
Johnson, in many instances bearing up bravely under
comparison with Sara Teasdale, takes advantage of the
numerous opportunities offered them for rhymed
polemics.

If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to
state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are
concerned is in the decline. Added to the fact that
these poets are out of contact with this fast-dying medium,
certain sociological considerations and the natural
limitations of dialect for poetic expression militate
against its use even as a _tour de force_. In a day when
artificiality is so vigorously condemned, the Negro poet
would be foolish indeed to turn to dialect. The majority
of present-day poems in dialect are the efforts
of white poets.

This anthology, by no means offered as _the_ anthology
of verse by Negro poets, is but a prelude, we hope, to
that fuller symphony which Negro poets will in time
contribute to the national literature, and we shall be
sadly disappointed if the next few years do not find
this collection entirely outmoded.

       *       *       *       *       *

The biographical notices carried with these poems
have been written by the poets themselves save in three
cases (Dunbar’s having been written by his wife, the
younger Cotter’s by his father, and Lula Weeden’s by
her mother), and if they do not reveal to a curious
public all it might wish to know about the poets, they
at least reveal all that the poets deem necessary and
discreet for the public to know.

COUNTEE CULLEN.




CONTENTS


  FOREWORD                                                   vii

  PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
  Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes                2
  Death Song                                                   4
  Life                                                         5
  After the Quarrel                                            5
  Ships that Pass in the Night                                 7
  We Wear the Mask                                             8
  Sympathy                                                     8
  The Debt                                                     9

  JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR.
  The Tragedy of Pete                                         11
  The Way-side Well                                           15

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Caroling dusk : $b an anthology of verse by Negro poets

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