More than twenty-five years ago, in 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks listed three "impressive advantages" possessed by black poets: subjects that are "moving, authoritative and humane"; "great drive"; and "inspiriting emotion, like tied hysteria." She voiced her fear, however, that precisely because of these advantages, the poets might yield to the temptation to substitute them, with "no embellishment, no interpretation, no subtlety," for art…. [But, says Brooks]:

… no real artist is going to be content with offering raw materials. The Negro poet's most urgent duty, at present, is to polish his technique, his way of presenting his truths and his beauties, that these may be more insinuating, and, therefore, more overwhelming.

Never content herself with "offering raw materials," Brooks has, for almost half a century, followed her own dictum by producing poetry marked both by power and by polished technique.

One example is "The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little...