ABSTRACT
The editor has requested, aside from the poems that are to represent James W. Thompson in this volume, a statement of approximately 450 words, about his work: his reasons for writing, his aims, and the place that race takes in his work and thought. They should be asked of some historian of his work long after it has been established as vivid and valuable literature. There perhaps, is an exposure of some unconscious aim: to create vivid and valuable literature. One wants to seem, whether he is or not, extremely knowledgeable about his work and himself when in reality he is quite often in an agitated state of discovery and depression without the precise analytical terms necessary to define his state. Naturally, one risks apologizing for his work if it is bad, or defending it, if he is, as he is, one of the thousands struggling in the stacks amidst the magnificence and mess that is today's literature.
