Books: Poetry, Feb. 22, 1943

FOR MY PEOPLE—Margaret Walker— Yale ($2).

There is perhaps more quiet medicament for negrophobes in Margaret Walker's For My People than in any other book of Negro verse yet published. Poetess Walker, a 27-year-old, Alabama-born English teacher, avoids the callow literary posturing that is the curse of most Negro versifiers. In this, her first book, she writes with civilized simplicity and dignity about the humanity of her people. The effect, whether in her psalmlike lyrics, her stark ballads or her biting sonnets, is often solemn and beautiful, like a black frost in the...