"Four Lincoln University Poets" (Anthology, 1930)
Foreword by William Hallock Johnson
Waring Cuney
William Allyn Hill
Edward Silvera
Langston Hughes
Vol. XXXIII Lincoln University Herald, March 1930
FOREWORD
The criticism has often been made that while America has produced a form of government that has been widely copied by other nations and a type of industrial civilization that has been the admiration and envy of other peoples, yet in the realm of art we have been content to copy European models.
This criticism has been in a measure removed by the creation upon our western shores of two new and original forms of musical expression, both the work of a group of Americans of African descent and both now enjoying a world wide popularity. The so-called plantation melodies or "spirituals," growing out of the experiences of slavery days, with their mingling of beauty and pathos, of despondency and triumphant hope have been a distinct contribution to the religious lyrics of the world. They have repeated the lesson of the Psalms of David, that religious faith, while beginning its song on the minor key of despondence and complaint, can rise upon the wings of hope and wing itself and sing itself up to God. As James Weldon Johnson recently said of the "spirituals" in an address in Lincoln University chapel, "these songs of sorrow, love, faith and hope are the most precious and most wonderful contribution which the Negro has made to the art of America and the world."
On the lighter side and expressing rather a spirit of reckless jollity and irresponsible mirth, has been the development of jazz music which has achieved a world popularity and has given its name to what, not wholly in compliment, has been called the jazz age.
In the field of poetry the pioneer has been Paul Laurence Dunbar, who has justified his existence as a poet, to use the words of Rabindranath Tagore, by expressing in his lyrics of lowly life "that which is universal in the heart of the unique." In his dialect poems, he has thrown the tender light of romance and humor over the life of his people, and has made the world laugh at the rollicking fun of "The Party," thrill to the music "When Malindy Sings," and weep over the description of "Life:"
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never a laugh but the moans come double;
And that is life!
The aim of the poet and the artist is to transcend the limits of finite existence. It is his high office and privilege to show to us in common objects and common experiences a beauty which we cannot see with unanointed eyes. The artist can create for himself and for those who see or read his works an ideal world of beauty, providing for us a means of escape from the shackles of the commonplace and opening vistas into a region even beyond the limits of time and space.
A group of undergraduates on the Lincoln University campus have shown by their activity in the realm of creative imagination that intellectual interest is not confined to the routine of the classroom, and that undergraduate enthusiasm is not monopolized by athletics and campus politics. Among those who have been diligent in cultivating the Muse have been the four young men, samples of whose work in poetry are here reproduced. The leader of these has been Langston Hughes, '29, winner of the Bynner Prize for undergraduate poetry in 1926, and recently spoken of by the Berliner Tageblatt as the leading poet of his race in America. The others are William Allyn Hill, '29, whose father and three older brothers graduated before him in Lincoln University; Edward Silvera, '28, now a medical student; and Waring Cuney, ex-'27, who left college to devote himself to the study of music.
The institution that has trained them and sent them forth has reason to be proud of the younger school of Lincoln poets. Their work as shown in the following pages, all of it the product of undergraduate days, has already gained wide appreciation, and gives promise that with a more mature technique, with a fuller mastery of their instrument, and with the insight and experience that come with the years, they will make a contribution even more significant to the artistic and literary life of their country, and will win in larger measure both for themselves and the group they represent the respect and recognition of the world.
William Hallock Johnson
Lincoln University
Pennsylvania
Contents of this path:
- Waring Cuney, "Crucifixion" (1928)
- Waring Cuney, "The Radical" (1927)
- Waring Cuney, "Threnody" (1928)
- Waring Cuney, "Forgetting" (1928)
- Waring Cuney, "No Images" (1927)
- Waring Cuney, "Finis" (1928)
- William Allyn Hill, "Night Walks Down the Mountain" (1928)
- William Allyn Hill, "Love Is Not Yet Spent" (1928)
- William Allyn Hill, "Comprehension" (1928)
- William Allyn Hill, "Fugitive Serfs" (1928)
- Edward Silvera, "On the Death of a Child" (1930)
- Edward S. Silvera , "Song to a Dark Girl" (1927)
- Edward Silvera, "To Lincoln at Graduation" (1930)
- Edward Silvera (Edward S. Silvera), "You" (1930)
- Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921)
- Langston Hughes, "Poem (Being Walkers With the Dawn...)" (1925)
- Langston Hughes, "Cross" (1925)
- Langston Hughes, "Youth" (1924)
- Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son" (1922)
- "Four Lincoln University Poets: Notes on the Writers" (1930)