judged from the quality of what has hitherto been produced. It is therefore decidedly pertinent to raise several questions about the existing body of Negro poetry.
How much poetry has been written by Negroes? What
is its intrinsic worth as literature? Has the race produced any really worth-while poets except Dunbar?
Does this poetry add any new element to American
poetry or bid fair to do so? What are its themes, and
what is its spirit? Is it as typically Negro as the Negro
folk-song? Is its attitude toward the race question
sensitive and resentful or, like that of the folk-songs,
oblivious and careless?
Some idea of the volume of verse already produced by American Negroes may be obtained from an examination of Arthur A. Schomburg's Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry, published in 1916. Omitting the considerable number of volumes published in French and Spanish, there are 173 titles published in English. Some of these, however, are single poems published in various periodicals; some are translations or anthologies, as for instance, James Weldon Johnson's translation of Goyescas, and William Stanley Braithwaite's annual anthologies of magazine verse; and some are volumes that contain both prose and poetry, e.g., J. Mord Allen's Rhymes, Tales, and Rhymed Tales and Otis M. Shakelford's Seeking the Best. The total volume is also reduced by the rather common practice, for which Poe has set a distinguished precedent, of padding out new volumes with poems from volumes previously printed. Even after Mr. Schomburg's list has been thus scaled down, and without allowing for titles overlooked by Mr. Schomburg or for the numerous books published since 1916, the total volume is rather surprising to the average person who has taken it for granted that the Negro is not interested in poetry.
