n amid fields of
cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long
association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and
by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor
and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the
Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the
United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or
artistically. Take, for example, the phases rising out of life in Harlem,
that most wonderful Negro city in the world. I do not deny that a Negro in
a log cabin is more picturesque than a Negro in a Harlem flat, but the
Negro in the Harlem flat is here, and he is but part of a group growing
everywhere in the country, a group whose ideals are becoming increasingly
more vital than those of the traditionally artistic group, even if its
members are less picturesque.

What the colored poet in the United States needs to do is something like
what Synge did for the Irish; he needs to find a form that will express
the racial spirit by symbols from within rather than by symbols from
without, such as the mere mutilation of English spelling and
pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer and larger than dialect, but
which will still hold the racial flavor; a form expressing the imagery,
the idioms, the peculiar turns of thought, and the distinctive humor and
pathos, too, of the Negro, but which will also be capable of voicing the
deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allow of the widest
range of subjects and the widest scope of treatment.

Negro dialect is at present a medium that is not capable of giving
expression to the varied conditions of Negro life in America, and much
less is it capable of giving the fullest interpretation of Negro character
and psychology. This is no indictment against the dialect as dialect, but
against the mould of convention in which Negro dialect in the United
States has been set. In time these conventions may become lost, and the
colored poet in the United States may sit down to write in dialect without
feeling that his first line will put the general reader in a frame of mind
which demands that the poem be humorous or pathetic. In the meantime,
there is no reason why these poets should not continue to do the beautiful
things that can be done, and done best, in the dialect.

In stating the need for Aframerican poets in the United States to work ou