Bontemps' poems [collected in Personals] make use of several recurring themes: the alien-and-exile allusions so often found in New Negro poetry; strong racial suggestiveness and applications; religious themes and imagery subtly used; and the theme of return to a former time, a former love, or a remembered place. On occasion he combines in a way common to lyrical writing the personal with the racial or the general. Many of these poems are protest poems; but the protest is oblique and suggestive rather than frontal. Over all of Bontemps' poetry there is a sad, brooding quality, a sombre "Il Penseroso" meditative cast. In Personals there are no obviously joyous or humorous pieces.

The most popular theme in these verses is that of return. There are seven poems dealing in some way with this subject. The one entitled "Return" has a double thrust, the coming back to an old love...