I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say, your professional poets, I mean there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is my belief that many who think they dislike poetry are really poetical in their natures and are indebted to it, more than they imagine, for the success they may have achieved, even in practical pursuits, and for the enjoyment their lives have afforded them.
I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.
Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.
Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.
Poets are accepted in Canada as practically nowhere else in the West because of their place in an officially supported and popularly endorsed Canadian culture. Yet, they are still bitter and argumentative, as poets elsewhere are, because they have no audience as such, only a sanctioned role in the cultural scheme of things.
Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.
Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.
Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.
Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.