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Nancy Berke (essay date November 1998)

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...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Richard K. Barksdale (essay date 1986)
   2. Margaret Walker and Lucy M. Freibert (interview date 1986)
   3. Margaret Walker Alexander and Kay Bonetti (interview date 1992)
   4. Margaret Walker and Joanne V. Gabbin (interview date 1996)
   5. Nancy Berke (essay date November 1998)
   6. Melba Joyce Boyd (essay date November 1998)
   7. Jacqueline Miller Carmichael (essay date 1998)
   8. Amiri Baraka (essay date 4 January 1999)
   9. Maryemma Graham (essay date summer 1999)
   10. Nancy Berke (essay date 2001)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright