SOURCE: Berke, Nancy. “Anything That Burns: The Social Poetry of Lola Ridge, Genevieve Taggard, and Margaret Walker.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 37 (November 1998): 39-53.

In the following essay, Berke calls attention to the often-neglected socially conscious poetry of three writers, including Walker's For My People.

Let anything that burns you come out whether it be propaganda or not … I write about something that I feel intensely. How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?

(Lola Ridge in an interview, 1920s)¹

What's in the men nowadays—the women have the fire & the ardency & the power & the depth.

(Genevieve Taggard in a letter to Josephine Herbst, early 1920s)²

As the Twentieth Century closes out, it may appear odd to epigrammatically draw upon the angry passions that two obscure names express as they vent their attitudes about literary practice in the 1920s. Yet it is the angry passion of...