# I Am the American Negro (collection)

The Book and the Author
I Am The American Negro is a collection of poetry written by Frank Marshall Davis since the appearance in September, 1935, of his first volume, Black Man's Verse, which drew high critical praise as excerpts from reviews, printed on the outside and inside back cover, indicate.
This volume offers a varied excursion into the realms of free verse. From the title poem, which is a poetic drama to be read and not acted, the subject matter goes into the grimly realistic and the lyrically passionate, ending in the section, "Ebony Under Granite" (continued from Black Man's Verse), inspired by the Greek Anthology.
I Am The American Negro belongs in the libraries of all literate persons, both black and white, who are interested in brilliant free verse and the reaction of a Midwestern Negro to the American scene.
The author, Frank Marshall Davis, is a former Kansan now living in Chicago where he is feature editor and a syndicated columnist for the Associated Negro Press.
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What critics said of
BLACK MAN'S VERSE
By Frank Marshall Davis
"Black Man's Verse unites sardonic realism and mysticism, a union here of cause and effect, not at all strange to any reader knowing Sandberg. Mr. Davis is embittered by American life, and at times seems to escape from it in dreams of Mandy Lou's loveliness, and of vestiges from an earlier, exotic Africa . . . The book's contribution is in its realism."
Sterling A. Brown, Opportunity
"No Negro poet — nor any white poet — has sung with as great force of the intellectual and spiritual bleakness of the black island which exists in dominantly white America. His singing is in a minor chord like music at a synagogue or keening at a wake."
Prof. C. E. Rogers, Kansas Industrialist
"Throughout he has stamped his own individuality in lines and frequently his experimental moods have caught the essence of an originality surcharged with a vigour of well rounded expression."
James O. Hopson, Crisis
"Frank Marshall Davis . . . has an etcher's touch and an acid bite to his vignettes of life that any 'proletarian poet' or Marxian critic might well envy and emulate . . . His social analysis is as accurate as his social description is trenchant."
Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke, Race, Summer, 1936
I am the AMERICAN NEGRO
By the same author
Black Man's Verse
I Am the American Negro
By Frank Marshall Davis
Black Cat Press Chicago, Illinois
1937
Copyright 1937, The Black Cat Press
First edition
Printed in the United States of America
To PROFESSOR C. E. ROGERS of Kansas State College, whose rare friendship is a valuable part of my few assets
FOREWARNING
Fairy words . . . a Pollyanna mind Do not roam these pages. Inside There are coarse victuals A couch of rough boards Companions who seldom smile Yet It is the soul's abode Of a Negro dreamer For being black In my America Is no rendezvous With Venus . . .
Acknowledgement
A few of the poems in this volume appeared originally in the Kansas Magazine. Others have not previously been published
CONTENTS
Ebony Under Granite
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