The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey (The New Marcus Garvey Library ; No. 2)

The New Marcus Garvey Library, No. 2 A great many people have been surprised and pleased al discovering that Honorable Marcus Garvey, President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, is a poet of high order: that is, that lie possesses in large measure the divine power of expressing himself in tin1 language of poetry, which a distinguished authority has declared to be the sublimest expression of the human soul after perfection. Only those who have suffered greatly or felt the ecstacies of joy in its highest and purest form, are capable of reaching the depths in poetic expression which affect and move great masses of people. -T. Thomas Fortune, NEGRO WOULD (1927) 'Marcus Garvey was many things race leader, journalist, orator and ideologist. . . . He was also a poet, and his poetical works are collected here for the first lime. . . . f rom a purely literary standpoint, he inspired better poetry than he himself produced. . . . Even so, however, lie could still justify the attempt, for he saw Ids verse as an important supplementary vehicle for propagating his ideas. And these are the ideas upon which the world's greatest Pan-African movement was built. -From the PREFACE TON\ .MARTIN is professor and chairman of the Black Studies department al Wellesley College, Massachusetts, lie is author of Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1970), The Pan-A frican Connection (1983), Literary Garvey ism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance (1983) and Marcus Garvey, Hero: 1 First Biography (1983). He co-authored Rare Afro-Americana: A Reconstruction of the Adger Library ( 1981).