SOURCE: "Preface," in This Is My Century, New and Collected Poems, University of Georgia Press, 1989, pp. xiii-xvii.

Walker summarizes her poetic career, acknowledging sources of literary inspiration and personal assistance from family members, friends and other writers throughout her life.

At Northwestern I first heard of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, and the Yale University Younger Poets competition. I heard Harriet Monroe read her poetry at North western, and I must have seen an ad in the Poets of America magazine announcing the Yale competition. I vowed then to publish in Poetry and to enter the competition at Yale.

I graduated from Northwestern during the Depression, and after seven months looking for a job I began work on the WPA Chicago Writers' Project. Here I worked with Richard Wright, who was writing his first professional prose at the time. I was profoundly impressed with his talent, his intense...