Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

A retraction (with thanks to fellow Harriet blogger and colleague on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, Stephen Burt for pointing this out).

I stand corrected regarding an earlier comment I made that no white male judge had ever selected a manuscript for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

In 1942, Stephen Vincent Benet selected Margaret Walker’s For My People.

The following is a poem that particularly touched me, titled “I Want to Write”:

I want to write
I want to write the songs of my people.
I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.
I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn

throats.

I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into

notes.

I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl;

fling dark hands to a darker sky

and fill them full of stars

then crush and mix such lights till they become

a mirrored pool of brilliance in the dawn.