Georgia Douglas Johnson - 7 Short Poems (1918-1928)

Forgotten Poems #77

    
              —: The Heart of a Woman (1918) :—

       The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
       As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
       Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
       In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

       The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
       And enters some alien cage in its plight,
       And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
       While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
    

    
              —: Contemplation (1918) :—

       We stand mute!
       No words can paint such fragile imagery,
       Those prismic gossamers that roll
       Beyond the skyline of the soul;
       We stand mute!
    

    
              —: Poetry (1918) :—

       Behold! The living thrilling lines
       That course the blood like madd'ning wines,
       And leap with scintillating spray
       Across the guards of ecstacy.
       The flame that lights the lurid spell
       Springs from the soul's artesian well,
       Its fairy filament of art
       Entwines the fragments of a heart.
    

    
              —: Cosmopolite (1922) :—

       Not wholly this or that,
       But wrought
       Of alien bloods am I,
       A product of the interplay
       Of traveled hearts.
       Estranged, yet not estranged, I stand
       All comprehending;
       From my estate
       I view earth's frail dilemma;
       Scion of fused strength am I,
       All understanding,
       Nor this nor that
       Contains me.
    

    
              —: Fusion (1922) :—

       How deftly does the gardener blend
       This rose and that
       To bud a new creation,
       More georgeous and more beautiful
       Than any parent portion,
       And so,
       I trace within my warring blood
       The tributary sources,
       They potently commingle
       And sweep
       With new born forces!
    

    
              —: When I Rise Up (1922) :—

       When I rise above the earth,
       And look down on the things that fetter me,
       I beat my wings upon the air,
       Or tranquil lie,
       Surge after surge of potent strength
       Like incense comes to me
       When I rise up above the earth
       And look down on the things that fetter me.
    

     
              —: Autumn (1928) :—

       Believe me—when I say
       That love like yours, at this belated hour,
       Overwhelms me,—
       Stills the fount of thought!
       I move as one new-born—
       And strange to swift transitions
       As from my prison door
       I gaze
       Into a blinding sunlight!
     

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1996) was a poet and playwright, from Atlanta, Georgia, published by all the major African American arts magazines of the 1910s and 1920s, and was a significant member of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement, alongside Langston Hughes, Angela Weld Grimke, Lewis Alexander, Gwendolyn Bennett, Anne Spencer, et al.

Johnson studied at Atlanta University and then the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, married Henry Lincoln Johnson, and moved to Washington with him. While Henry was not particularly supportive of her poetic career, Kelly Dean of Howard University saw some of her work, and passed it on to poet and well-known anthologist William Stanley Braithwaite, who asked to see more. Soon after she sent her work to W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis, who immediately published two of her poems.

“At this time Jessie Fauset, the novelist, was teaching French in Washington and very generously helped her to gather together material for her first book The Heart of A Woman (1918) with an introduction by Braithwaite. This was followed by Bronze (1922), a book of color with an introduction by Du Bois. Her third was An Autumn Love Cycle (1928) with an introduction by Alain Locke, the editor of The New Negro.” (Countee Cullen, in Caroling Dusk, 1927)

Johnson worked as a music teacher, played organ at her local church, and would go on to publish 4 books of poetry, 28 plays, and numerous short-stories, as well as being an activist for racial equality, particularly within the anti-lynching movement, and a tireless advocate of African American arts. After her husband’s death she opened her home to writers and artists every Saturday night for over 40 years. Known as the ‘S Street Salon’, it provided a meeting place for the Harlem Renaissance poets, and their peers; “Young writers gathered together almost every Saturday night exchanging ideas, reciting new poems or discussing plans for new creations.” (Cullen, 1927)

Johnson belonged to multiple heritages—her mother was African American and Native American, and her father, African American and English—something which she often addressed in her poetry. The poems ‘Cosmopolite’ and ‘Fusion’, for instance, directly address this, and pair well with other poems addressing the complexity of race in America in the 1910s, like Joseph S. Cotter’s similarly striking ‘To The Mulatto & His Critics’.

     
                      “We are made of star stuff”
              —: After Georgia Douglas Johnson :—
                                  By Dick Whyte

              I.

       cloud boned
       & clothed in copper,
       stitched
       by sinew thread,
       teeth
       made of lead,
       sky lines our veins
       with bloody
       globules
       of coagulated iron—

              II.

       forged
       in the dying light
       of sons & daughters
       crushed
       beneath the feet
       of warring giants

       when we return
       to the stars
       will they be proud
       to call themselves
       our kin?
     

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