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

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

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 wait.

I have a rendezvous with life.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

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