2018 Reprint of 1922 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. "Here is a young man, born in the British West Indies, who is without doubt the most talented and versatile of the new school of imaginative, emotional negro poets. Feeling intensely, at times bitterly, he succeeds, nevertheless, in preventing his emotions from affecting his genius as a poet. He has surety of expression, depth of feeling, the true lyric gift, and handles amazingly well subtle gradations of thought and of feeling. Mr. McKay is not a great negro poet--he is a great poet! This is his first book of verse to be published in the United States, but it will give him the high place among American poets to which he is rightfully entitled." Review of Harlem Shadows by Walter F. White, in The Negro's Contribution, 1922.