US "poet, critic, educator".
"He tapped a rich poetic source in the folk songs and blues in "Southern Road," 1932; co-edited important anthologies, e.g., "The Negro Caravan," 1941."
Dialect or the speech of the people is capable of expressing whatever the people are.
"I wanted to understand my people. I wanted to understand what it meant to he a Negro. what the qualities of life were. With their imagination, they combine two great loves: the love of words and the love of life. Poetry results."
"[T]he sincere, sensitive artist, willing to go beneath the cliches of popular belief to get at an underlying reality, will be wary of confining a race's entire characters to a half-dozen narrow grooves."
One thing they cannot prohibit -- The strong men . . . coming on The strong men gittin' stronger. Strong men. . . . Stronger. . . .
"I have . . . a deep concern with the development of a literature worthy of our past, and of our destiny; without which literature certainly, we can never come to much. I have a deep concern with the development of an audience worthy of such a literature."
