SOURCE: Clay, E. “Sterling Brown: American Peoples' Poet.” International Literature 8, no. 2 (June 1934): 117-22.

In the following essay, Clay assesses Brown's contribution to African American poetry.

Somewhere a long time ago, I ran across this apt couplet in an old poem, “The Singer:”

Thus in his manhood, clean, superb and strong To him was born the priceless gift of song. 

That fits Sterling Brown exactly: Brown is a singer, a rhapsodos, a singer of his people. The Greek rhapsodos was a reciter of the epic also. Epic poetry is usually great poetry and requires mighty subject matter. There is vast, unmined material for epic poetry in the Negro race and one hopes fervently that Sterling Brown will fulfill the fine echoed prophecy of Stephen Vincent Benet in his John Brown's Body:

Oh, blackskinned epic, epic with the black spear I cannot sing you, having too white a heart And...