Poetry Is Life Distilled.

I Believe We Should All Know Each Other, We Human Carriers Of So Many Pleasurable Differences. To Not Know Is To Doubt, To Shrink From, Sidestep Or Destroy.

When White And Black Meet Today, Sometimes There Is A Ready Understanding That There Has Been An Encounter Between Two Human Beings. But Often There Is Only, Or Chiefly, An Awareness That Two Colors Are In The Room.

... Sometimes You Have To Deal / Devilishly With Drowning Men In Order To Swim Them To Shore.

What I'm Fighting For Now In My Work... For An Expression Relevant To All Manner Of Blacks, Poems I Could Take Into A Tavern, Into The Street, Into The Halls Of A Housing Project.

Do Not Desire To Fit In. Desire To Oblige Yourselves To Lead.