Nava Atlas's Blog, page 7

From New Journalism to Modern Gonzo: Joan Didion, Gail Sheehy & Barbara Ehrenreich

Gonzo journalism is a writing style strongly associated with Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. However, others have contributed their voice to immersive journalism since the genre’s earliest roots in New Journalism.

Here we’ll explore the work of Joan Didion, Gail Sheehy, and Barbara Ehrenreich in this context as three impactful female gonzo journalists.

Where the author becomes central to the story or investigation is an example of immersive or gonzo journalism.

 

A Brief Introduction to Immersive Journalism

The first use of the term “New Journalism” is credited to Matthew Arnold in 1887, and in more recent times, to Tom Wolfe. Gonzo journalism evolved from there, originating from a 1970s article about the Kentucky Derby published in Scanlan’s Monthly. Since then, immersive nonfiction is another broad, descriptive phrase for this particular journalistic style.

However, some sources have stated that the first use of the word “gonzo” was used by the Boston Globe editor to describe Thompson’s writing style. Collins Dictionary lists the meanings for gonzo as “wild or crazy” or alternatively as “explicitly indicating the writer’s feelings at the time of witnessing the events.”

The phrase “crazy” would also be used to describe any events surrounding the gonzo author or observer, with Thompson noting: “If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”

Gonzo, immersive, or investigative journalism sometimes adds responsibility or risk to reporting a story. However, gonzo journalism is never written as deliberate recklessness on the author’s part—there’s always a sense of responsibility even if stories or topics might get “crazy”.

Once the journalist becomes central to their story, you have a possible contender for what might be immersive nonfiction or gonzo journalism. For example, it can be argued that one of its early pioneers was Nellie Bly (1864–1922) who had herself institutionalized so that she could write the now-famous exposé, Ten Days in a Madhouse.

Bly’s writing also took her on a trip around the world in 72 days— she took inspiration from Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days (1872) to see whether it was truly possible. Her real journey beat the fictional one by more than a week.

Modern gonzo journalism and immersive nonfiction have shown no signs of stopping or slowing down. The Gonzo Foundation promotes modern gonzo journalism by preserving Hunter S. Thompson’s legacy and writings.

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Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934–2021) was one of gonzo journalism’s pioneers. Didion typed out Ernest Hemingway’s works as a writing exercise. This technique was echoed by Hunter S. Thompson, who did the same with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing.

She published her debut novel Run River in 1963, though focused much of her work on immersive nonfiction. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) is a seminal work that explores California life and the countercultural hippie movement.

Didion’s  essay for The Saturday Evening Post in 1967 described the darker side of Haight-Ashbury counterculture—shooting meth and dropping acid, a sharp contrast to the Summer of Love that was being portrayed in the media.

The nonfiction work Salvador (1983) covered the Salvadorian civil war from first-hand perspective—truly immersive journalism. In 1992, she published another essay collection titled After Henry. 

Her New York Times essay “Why I Write” explored Didion’s motivations: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means.”

Didion’s essay “In Bed” described her struggle with chronic migraines. She wrote: “Four, sometimes five times a month, I spend the day in bed with a migraine headache, insensible to the world around me.”

The Year of Magical Thinking chronicled the grieving process after her husband’s death. Written in 2004, it was published in 2005. Didion’s last book was an essay collection Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021).

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Gail Sheehy

Gail Sheehy (1936 – 2020) was a pivotal immersive nonfiction writer, journalist, and political essayist. She examined the dark side of city living, often intermingled with her first-person perspective. She wrote for some of creative nonfiction’s most familiar magazines and publications, including Vanity Fair and New York.

Sheehy began writing sales and advertising copy for retailer J.C. Penney. She later became known for serious, hard-hitting feature writing. Like many immersive nonfiction authors, Sheehy’s writing put controversial topics under the spotlight. Famously, Sheehy provided in-depth and never-before-seen coverage of the Kennedy family.

Gail Sheehy wrote a 1969 feature article called Speed City for New York Magazine. Eventually, the idea evolved into the longer work Speed is of the Essence (1971), a book highlighting the evils of drug addiction and methamphetamine.

Redpants and Sugarman later became an explorative 1971 feature article about city prostitution.

The song Sugar Man by Rodriguez (professional mononym of Sixto Diaz Rodriguez) was recorded in 1969—and released in 1970 from the album Cold Fact. The Tom Waits song Downtown Train also makes a passing reference to “redpants and the sugar man” in 1985.

Sheehy’s influence stretched beyond journalism and into popular culture. Her writing continued to follow immersive journalism and gonzo-related writing.

Sheehy joined the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) as an associate in 1977. Today, the list contains a worldwide list of female journalists and press staff, including Sena Christian, Kashini Maistry, and Dorothy Abbott.

She continued in her highly detailed political coverage, and some of her focused pieces about Hillary Clinton were collected in the book Hillary’s Choice (1999). Sheehy’s writing evolved as she aged, and her later essays more readily covered aging and grief. Later books included Sex and the Seasoned Woman (2006) and Passages Into Caregiving (2010).

Gail Sheehy’s final work was a memoir—Daring: My Passages: A Memoir (2014). She passed away in 2020 at the age of 83. In her New York Times obituary, Sheehy was described as a “journalist, author, and social observer.”

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Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941 – 2022) was an influential news writer, journalist, and creative nonfiction author. She received her PhD in cellular immunology. However, she dedicated her life to social causes and commentary after giving birth to her daughter in a public healthcare clinic in 1970.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) lauds Ehrenreich’s “pen and sarcastic wit,” which became part of her characteristic writing style. Ehrenreich focused much of her writing on social causes, including healthcare, economics, and women’s rights. She became familiar as a columnist whose work turned into more than twenty published books.

In 1978, Ehrenreich published one of her most famous titles: For Her Own Good. This work explored the treatment of women, illustrated with “150 years of expert advice” that put women at a disadvantage in healthcare and science.

Ehrenreich was also known for such nonfiction works as The American Health Empire (1971); Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (1972); and The Snarling Citizen (1995). The Worst Years of Our Lives (1990) collected more of Ehrenreich’s essays, focusing on the progression of female rights—and the lack thereof.

The 2001 nonfiction book Nickeled and Dimed continues the tradition of immersive journalism. In this case, Ehrenreich cast a spotlight on American income by living the actual experience of getting by on minimum-wage jobs, and then documenting the results.

The 2005 book Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream was another one of Ehrenreich’s immersive works. For this book, she assumed the role of a corporate employee climbing the company ladder—the description calling it “the shadowy world of the corporate unemployed.”

Bright-Sided (2009) explored the downsides of “positive thinking” and the psychological impact of being told to be happier in the face of financial or social issues. This was a deliberate commentary on “guru-like” thinking, published during the self-help boom.

Her writing focused often on topics like social or economic injustices, and took an insider’s perspective on these issues. Ehrenreich stands out as an important gonzo journalist, because she was never afraid to immerse herself in the story — Living with a Wild God (2014) explored her thoughts on religion as a nonbeliever.

Ehrenreich wrote features for numerous publications, including Vogue, Salon.com, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times. Her last book was a collection of essays called Had I Known, published in 2020. Barbara Ehrenreich, called a “myth-busting writer and activist” in an obituary, passed away in 2022.

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Contributed by Alex J. Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

The post From New Journalism to Modern Gonzo: Joan Didion, Gail Sheehy & Barbara Ehrenreich appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Mae V. Cowdery, a Harlem Renaissance Poet to Rediscover

Mae Virginia Cowdery (also known as Mae V. Cowdery; January 10, 1909 – November 2, 1948) is an under-appreciated poetic voice from the Harlem Renaissance era of the 1920s. A selection of her earlier poems is presented here.

Mae was the only child of professional parents who were part of Philadelphia’s Black elite. They instilled in her their values of racial pride, equality, and respect for the arts.

Above right, Mae in 1928 at age nineteen, sporting an androgynous look.

While still a student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, three of Mae’s poems were published in Black Opals, a prestigious short-lived (1927 – 1928) literary journal of a Philadelphia cultural organization of the same name.

For the fledgling poet, 1927 was a banner year. In addition to publication in Black Opals, she won first prize for her poem “Longings” in an NAACP-sponsored competition. It was published in the association’s journal, The Crisis. She won the Krigwa Prize for “Lamps, ” and “Dusk” was chosen for Ebony and Topaz, an anthology of Black poets published that same year.

Mae attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with the aim of studying fashion design. Though she didn’t complete her studies, her sojourn in New York City was an entry into the lively cultural scene in Greenwich Village. Perhaps that’s where she encountered the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose poetry she admired. She also enjoyed a lively correspondence with Langston Hughes, who greatly encouraged her poetic endeavors.

After her early successes, she continued to have her poems published in journals and anthologies highlighting writers now associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1936, Mae produced a limited edition of 350 copies of We Lift Our Voices: And Other Poems, which was critically well received. And because there were relatively few copies printed, it’s difficult to obtain this book.

Not yet in the public domain, its contents are not freely distributed online. I was fortunate enough to see one of the rare copies in the main branch of the New York Public Library, and the poetry is just beautiful. Hopefully it can become more widely available when it falls into the public domain.

Mae’s bisexual life was an open a secret. Desire for both male and female love objects were expressed in her poetry. “Dusk” (1927), for example, begins: Like you / Letting down your  / Purpled shadowed hair  /To hide the rose and gold  / Of your loveliness … In “Love in These Days” a relationship sours between a woman and a man: Her eyes were hard  /  And his bitter  / As they sat and watched  / The fire fade …

After her sojourn in New York City, Mae returned to Philadelphia, married twice, had a daughter, and her life folded into the city’s Black elite. Society columns depicted her public persona as a young society matron, impeccably attired in dresses and pearls, a contrast to her androgynous portrait at age nineteen shown at the top of this post.

It’s not clear why Mae took her own life at the age of thirty-nine (in 1948). Her obituary made no mention that she was a published poet. Philadelphia-based anthropologist and activist Arthur Huff Fauset (half-brother of Jessie Redmon Fauset) wrote that Mae was “a flame that burned out rapidly … a flash in the pan with great potential who just wouldn’t settle down.” To be fair, we don’t know if she wouldn’t, or simply couldn’t, due to external pressures to conform.

Numbering more than sixty exquisite poems, Mae Cowdery’s body of work is significant, even in comparison to those contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance era who have remained known. One of the best overviews of her brief life can be found in Aphrodite’s Daughters: Three Modernist Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Maureen Honey (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

The following is a selection of poems by Mae Virginia Cowdery are in the public domain.

LampsLongingsThe Wind BlowsDuskTimeGoalHidden MoonMy BodyNamelessLove in These DaysA PrayerOf the EarthWant

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Lamps

Bodies are lamps
And their life is the light.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Dwelling in the tabernacles
    Of the most high—are lamps.
Lighting the weary pilgrims’ way
    As they travel the dreary night—are lamps.
Swinging aloft in great Cathedrals
    Beaming on rich and poor alike—are lamps.
Flickering fitfully in harlot dives
    Wanton as they that dwell therein— are lamps.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Some flames rise high above the horizon
    And urge others to greater power.
Some burn steadfast thru the night
    To welcome the prodigal home.
Others flicker weakly, lacking oil to burn
    And slowly die unnoticed.
What matter how bright the flame
    How weak?
What matter how high it blazes
    How low?
A puff of wind will put it out.
You and I are lamps—Ebony lamps,
Our flame glows red and rages high within
But our ebon shroud becomes a shadow
And our light seems weak and low.
    Break that shadow
    And let the flame illumine heaven
    Or blow wind…blow
    And let our feeble lights go out.

(The Crisis, December 1927. This poem was one of two poems by Mae Cowdery that won first prize in the 1927 poetry competition in The Crisis, along with the next poem, “Longings”)

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Longings

To dance—
In the light of moon,
A platinum moon
Poised like a slender dagger
On the velvet darkness of night.

To dream—
’Neath the bamboo trees
On the sable breast
Of earth—
And listen to the wind.

To croon—
Weird sweet melodies
Round the cabin door
With banjos clinking softly—
And from out the shadow
Hear the beat of tom-toms
Resonant through the years.

To plunge—
My brown body
In a golden pool,
And lazily float on the swell
Watching the rising sun.

To stand—
On a purple mountain
Hidden from earth
By mists of dreams
And tears—

To talk—
With God.

(The Crisis, December 1927)

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The Wind Blows

The wind blows.
My soul is like a tree
Lifting its face to the sun,
Flinging wide its branches
To catch the falling rain,
   To breathe into itself a fragrance
Of far-off fields of clover,
Of hidden vales of violets,—
The wind blows,—
It is spring!

The wind blows.
My soul is like sand,
Hot, burning sand
That drifts and drifts
Caught by the wind,
Swirling, stinging, swarting,
Silver in the moonlight.
Soft breath of lovers’ feet
Lulled to sleep by the lap of waves,
The wind blows—
It is summer!

The wind blows.
My soul is still
In silent reverie
Hearing sometimes a sigh
As the frost steals over the land
Nipping everywhere.
Earth is dead.
The woods are bare.
The last leaf is gone.
Nipped by death’s bitter frost,
My youth grown grey
Awaits the coming of
The new year.
The wind blows,—
It is winter!

(Opportunity, October 1927)

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Dusk

Like you 
Letting down your 
Purpled shadowed hair 
To hide the rose and gold 
Of your loveliness 
And your eyes peeping thru 
Like beacon lights 
In the gathering darkness. 

(Ebony and Topaz, 1927)

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Time

I used to sit on a high green hill
And long for you to be like the clouds,
Soft and white……….
And you eyes be like heaven’s blue
And your hair like the tree sifted sun……….
But then I was young, and my eyes yet
Round with wonder.
Now I site by an endless road and watch 
As you come……….swiftly like dusk
Your hair like a starless night
Your eyes like deep violet shadows,
And soft arms cradle me on your sweet
Brown breast……….for I have grown old
And my eyes hold unshed tears,
And my face is lean and hard in daylight’s
Mocking glare.
But with the night
Dusk fingers and lips like dew
Erase each wound of time
And my eyes grow round with wonder 
At your beauty. 

(Black Opals, Christmas 1927)

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Goal

My words shall drip
Like molten lava
From the towering black volcano,
On the sleeping town
’Neath its summit.
My thoughts shall be
Hot ashes
Burning all in its path.

I shall not stop
Because critics sneer,
Nor stoop to fawning
At man’s mere fancy.

I shall breathe
A clearer freer air
For I shall see the sun
Above the crowd, 

I shall not blush
And make excuse
When a son of Adam,
Who calls himself
“God’s Layman,”
Slashes with scorn
A thing born from
Truth’s womb and nursed
By beauty. It will not
Matter who stoops
To cast the first stone.
Does not my spirit
Soar above these feeble
Minds? thoughts born
From prejudice’s womb
And nursed by tradition? 

I will shatter the wall
Of darkness that rises
From gleaming day
And seeks to hide the sun.
I will turn this wall of 
Darkness (that is night)
Into a thing of beauty.

I will take from the hearts
Of black men–
Prayers their lips 
Are ‘fraid to utter.
And turn their coarseness
Into a beauty of the jungle
Whence they came.

The lava from the black volcano
Shall be words–the ashes–thoughts 
Of all men.

(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

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Hidden Moon

My thoughts soared up
To the starless sky
And a cloud
Passed over the face
Of the yellow moon.
My thoughts
Are the clouds that hide
The face of the moon,
And yours are
The night wind
That blows away the ugly
Moon clouds. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

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My Body

My body
Is an ugly thing
Fashioned by God.
My body
Is an empty thing
Made from crumbling sod.

My soul
Is a lovely thing
Fashioned by God.
My soul 
Is a flaming thing
That trampling hordes
Have left untrod. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

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Nameless

How like the restless beating
Of our hearts
Is the surge of the sea;
How like the tumult
Of our souls
Is the lashing of the storm;
How like the yearning
In our song
Is the wind,
How like a prayer
Is night.

(Black Opals, Christmas 1928)

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Love in These Days

Her eyes were hard
And his bitter
As they sat and watched 
The fire fade
From the ashes of their love.
Then they turned 
And saw the naked autumn wind
Shake the bare autumn trees,
And each one thought
As the cold came in–
……..”It might have been”……..

(Black Opals, June 1928)

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A Prayer

I saw a dark boy
     Trudging on the road
(Twas’ a dreary road Blacker than night).
     Oft times he’d stumble
And stagger ‘neath his burden
     But still he kept trudging
Along that dreary road.

I heard a dark boy
     Singing as he passed
Oft times he’d laugh
     But still a tear
Crept thru his song,
     As he kept trudging
Along that weary road.

I saw a long white mist roll down
     And cover all the earth
(There wasn’t even a shadow
     To tell it was night).
And then there came an echo . . . .
 . . . . Footsteps of a dark boy
Still climbing on the way.

A song with its tear
     And then a prayer
From the lips of a dark boy
     Struggling thru the fog.
Oft times I’d hear
     The lashing of a whip
And then a voice would cry to heaven
     “Lord! . . . Lord!
     Have mercy! . . .  mercy!”
And still that bleeding body
     Pushed onward thru the fog .
Song . . .  Tears . . .  Blood . . .  Prayer
     Throbbing thru the mist.
The mist rolled by
     And the sun shone fair,
Fair and golden
     On a dark boy . . . . cold and still
High on a bare bleak tree
     His face upturned to heaven
His soul upraised in song
     “Peace. . . . Peace
     Rest in the Lord.”
Oft times in the twilight
     I can hear him still singing
As he walks in the heavens,
     A song without a tear
A prayer without a plea.
Lord, lift me up to the purple sky
     That lays its hand of stars
Tenderly on my bowed head
     As I kneel high on this barren hill.
My song holds naught but tears
     My prayer is but a plea
Lord take me to the clouds
     To sleep . . . to sleep.

(The Crisis, September 1928)

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Of the Earth

A mountain
Is earth’s mouth . . .
She thrusts her lovely
Sun painted lips
To the clouds . . . for heaven’s kiss.

A tree
Is earth’s soul . . .
She raises her verdant
Joyous prayer
To the slowly sinking sun
And to evening’s dew.
She flings her rugged defiance
To hell’s grumbling wrath
And deadly smile;
Then rustles her thanksgiving
To the dawn.

A river
Is earth’s tears . . .
Flowing from her deep brown bosom
To the horizon of
Oblivion . . .
O! Earth, why do you weep? 

(The Carolina Magazine, May 1928)

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Want

I want to take down with my hands
The silver stars
That grow in heaven’s dark blue meadows
And bury my face in them.

I want to wrap all around me
The silver shedding of the moon
To keep me warm.

I want to sell my soul
To the wind in a song
To keep me from crying in the night.

I want to wake and find
That I have slept the day away,
Only nights are kind now . . . 
With the stars . . . moons . . . winds and me . . . 

(The Crisis, November 1928)

See also:
Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance to Rediscover and Read

Books on women writers of the Harlem Renaissance  on Bookshop.org *

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Ellen Glasgow, Southern Writer Worth Rediscovering

Ellen Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) was one of the South’s most eminent writers of her day. Today she’s far less known than contemporaries like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, despite having created an impressive body of work.

Ellen’s output included novels, collections of short stories and poems, a treatise on how to write fiction, and an autobiography. She was also the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1942. Today, if she is remembered for anything, it’s more for her influence than her literary talent. 

It’s well worth rediscovering this often overlooked writer.

 

Early years

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia to Francis Thomas and Anne Jane Gholson Glasgow. Her father, of Scotch-Irish descent, was from the Shenandoah Valley and studied at Washington and Lee College. Her mother was from an upper-crust family in Cumberland County with many illustrious ancestors.     

The dynamics of family life had an enormous influence on the young Ellen. Her mother, who gave birth to ten children, suffered from nerves and depression. Her father, a rough, blunt man who had affairs, ran Tredegar Iron Works, which supplied most of the munitions during the Civil War.   

Ellen’s parents decided her health was fragile and she was too headstrong for school, so she was educated at home. Lucky for this smart, curious, young lady, she had access to her father’s library and read voraciously: history, literature, and philosophy.

Over the years she was influenced by thinkers like Freud, Schopenhauer, and Darwin. Asserting her independence, she told her parents she would not make her debut, a right of passage for aristocratic southern young ladies.

Ellen was twenty when her mother died. This had a profound impact on her, and she never fully forgave her father for his ill-treatment of her mother.  

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Reshaping the literature of the South

Ellen Glasgow’s writing sparked a reshaping of the literature of the South. Her novels studied the changing culture and the roles of men and women, leaving behind the sentimental stories of olden times: the plantation houses surrounded by magnolias in the distance, the slaves toiling in the fields, all with the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Most of her books, set in Virginia,  were social histories of the region as it changed from an agrarian to an industrial society and women’s roles transformed; she can be considered an early feminist who certainly resented the strictures placed on her by society. 

Ellen left a generous body of work: some twenty novels; books of short stories and poems; essays; articles; and a memoir and collection of letters published posthumously. See her full bibliography.

In 1940 Ellen was awarded the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1942, she was awarded the Pulitzer for her novel, In This Our Life. By then, she was aging, suffering from poor health, and winding down as a writer. In This Our Life was released as a 1942 film directed by John Huston, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland.  

A memorable quote from In This Our Life: “Why do all of us, every last one, have to go through hell to find out what we really want?”

The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture cites seven novels as her best efforts. The Deliverance (1904) depicts class conflict after the Civil War; her trilogy about women: Virginia (1913), Life and Gabriella (1916), and Barren Ground (1925) – stories about strong females who rebel against their roles in society. Further, she wrote three comedies of manners: The Romantic Comedians (1926), They Stooped to Folly (1929), and The  Shelter of Life (1932). 

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The 1942 film adaptation of
Ellen Glasgow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

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Troubles in life and love

In life, suffering can often lead to a heavy heart, a soulful depth of experience, and — good writing. Ellen Glasgow had more than her share of troubles. In addition to having little respect for her father and losing her beloved mother at such an impressionable age, she was a sickly child who battled debilitating deafness during her adult years. She lost her favorite sister Cary to cancer and later, her brother Frank and brother-in-law George McCormack (Cary’s husband) to suicide. 

In her twenties, she had an affair with a married man we only know as Gerald B., who later died. Ellen’s love life continued to be unlucky. For years she was quietly engaged to handsome Richmond attorney Henry Watkins Anderson, who was deeply involved with The Red Cross during World War II.

Anderson was assigned to the Red Cross Commission in the Balkans, where he began an affair with the beautiful Queen Marie of Romania (who also happened to be married). After some time, when Anderson returned to Richmond, he was still smitten with the Queen and couldn’t stop talking about her. Despairing, Ellen overdosed on sleeping pills one night. Yet she survived, and out of the ashes of misery came creativity. She kept writing and her reputation grew.  

 

Animal advocacy

Ellen had a great passion for social justice and was also very involved in animal advocacy. One of her charities was the Richmond SPCA. She encouraged many prominent citizens like Douglas Southall Freeman and James Branch Cabell to donate and get involved, and she was president of the board for twenty-one years, right up until her death; she was the driving force behind opening the city’s first shelter. 

According to the SPCA website, Ellen bequeathed the bulk of her estate and the rights to her work to this organization which gave them the seed for their endowment. All this was left in honor of her Sealyham Terrier Jeremy. 

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Ellen Glasgow’s legacy

Ellen had a wealth of interesting friends, including Allen Tate, James Branch Cabell, and H.L. Mencken. Her friend Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was writing her biography but died before its completion.

This erudite, well-traveled, glass-ceiling-breaker was known for her grand entertaining at her Greek Revival mansion at 1 West Main in downtown Richmond. Once she even had a party for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas while they were on their American tour. 

(An interesting note, in 2024, her house went up for sale for $1.395 million — 11,000 square feet, with all the beautiful historical details intact) 

Biographer Susan Goodman described Ellen Glasgow’s style as poetic realism. She influenced writers like Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, and William Faulkner. Here’s hoping that a reconsideration of her works spreads beyond literary buffs and researchers. 

Ellen Glasgow died in her sleep on November 21, 1945, likely from heart disease. She is buried in Richmond’s historic Hollywood Cemetery with her beloved Jeremy alongside. Her epitaph reads: “Tomorrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New.”

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Contributed by Tyler Scott, who has been writing essays and articles since the early 1980s for various magazines and newspapers.  In 2014 she published her novel The Excellent Advice of a Few Famous Painters. She lives in Blackstone, Virginia where she and her husband renovated a Queen Anne Revival house and enjoy small town life. Visit her at Pour the Coffee, Time to Write.

Further reading and sourcesGoodman, Susan.  Ellen Glasgow, A Biography. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998Reagan, Wilson and Freeis, William.  Documenting the American South, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.  University of North Carolina Press, 1989: Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow, 1873-1945 Mambrol, Nassullah. Analysis of Ellen Glasgow’s Novels – Literary Theory and Criticism . June 2, 2018.  Berke, Amy. Bleil, Robert, Cofer, Jordan. Davis, Doug, Ellen Glasgow, American Literature After 1865, Chapter 76,  Pressbooks:  Ellen Glasgow (1873 – 1945) – American Literatures After 1865 Schwarting, Paulette. Ellen Glasgow’s Broken Heart | Virginia Museum of History & Culture Encyclopedia Britannica, Ellen Glasgow, American Author, Oct. 30, 2024.Starr, Robin, Richmond SPCA blog. June 8, 2011:  120 Years of History: Accomplishments of the early 1900’s and the leadership of Ellen Glasgow (Richmond SPCA Blog)

 

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Anarchism: What it Really Stands for by Emma Goldman (1911)

Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was a noted political activist and promoter of the anarchist philosophy. She was best known for her role in the development oof its theories in the early twentieth century.

As such, “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For” is a 1911 essay that crystalizes her views. Anarchism, in brief, argues against all forms of authority the abolishment of institutions of government, advocating for replacing them with stateless societies.

Goldman’s views seem particularly resonant — and relevant — in this age of government overreach into privacy and personal freedom.

In 1906, Goldman founded the Mother Earth Journal, serving as its editor and writing as a frequent contributor. The essay that follows  was originally published as a pamphlet (priced ten cents) by Mother Earth Publishing Association, in 1911. It is in the public domain.

 

Anarchism: What it Really Stands for by Emma Goldman

The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and crudest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself.

Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict’s garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on.

Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.

To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation be tween so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things.

The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. “Why?” “Because.” Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.

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Emma Goldman (International Institute of Social History)
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A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,—a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating?

Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true.

Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life,—individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that are only now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other, but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper environment: the individual and social instincts.

The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,—the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being.

The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, and between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him.

Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the leit-motif of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society.

Again and again the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State, society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself.

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination.

Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong.

The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence—that is, the individual—pure and strong.

“The one thing of value in the world,” says Emerson, “is the active soul; this every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and creates.” In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society.

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails.

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress.

Property, the dominion of man’s needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, “Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!”

The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead.

“Property is robbery,” said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast.

Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution?

The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power: the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade.

America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson.

Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller.

Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron.

Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

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Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth.

What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,—too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age.

They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock like, mechanical atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as “one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger.”

A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work.

One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist—the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force.

That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom. Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law,—the dominion of human conduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man’s needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct.

“All government in essence,” says [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, “is tyranny.” It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, [Henry] David Thoreau, said: “Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.”

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty.

Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that “the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish.

The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.”

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes.

Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities—the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement.

The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that “it is at present a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force.” This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist.

Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison.

To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when he says, “Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature.”

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only “order” that governments have ever maintained.

True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth.

The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government—laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,—is strenuously engaged in “harmonizing” the most antagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only in crease, but never do away with, crime.

What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation. Who that knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin:

“Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end.”

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual.

Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now.

Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best it has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and social variations and needs.

In destroying government and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature.

Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life.

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flat-headed parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.

Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances.

Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin.

Equally so it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change.

“All voting,” says Thoreau, “is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”

A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labor.

Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith?

One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success.

Added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances.

The State is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take.

Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for “men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.”

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the King’s coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.

True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will have to be abolished by direct action. Trade unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade union movement, and condemned the exponents of man’s right to organize to prison as conspirators.

Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labor unions) direct, revolutionary, economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor’s power.

The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.

Direct action, having proved effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism.

It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

The post Anarchism: What it Really Stands for by Emma Goldman (1911) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The Many Lives of Lee Miller, Photographer & War Correspondent

Elizabeth Lee Miller (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), known professionally as Lee Miller, was an American photographer and war correspondent. For many years she was known as the muse and lover of Surrealist artist Man Ray.

She was extraordinarily talented in her own right, moving with ease from the fashion circles of New York, to the Surrealist circles of Paris, to front-line photography in World War II.

Her life and work has been painstakingly documented and promoted by her son Antony Penrose, and most recently has been the subject of a 2023 film produced by and starring Kate Winslet.

 

Early life and education

Lee was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907. Her mother, Florence, was a nurse and her father Theodore was an engineer. She had two brothers: John (1905) and Erik (1910).

Theodore was a keen amateur photographer, and owned both a Kodak Brownie camera and a home darkroom. He taught Lee the basics of photography while she was just a girl. She was also his favorite model, and he took dozens of photographs of her, her friends, and her brothers over the years.

Despite having this loving family, Lee’s childhood was a difficult one. At age seven, while visiting relatives, she was raped by a family friend; this left her traumatized and suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. In the days before penicillin, the only treatment was douching with dichloride of mercury. As a nurse, it fell to Florence to administer these treatments, an experience which was horrendous for both her and Lee.

A few years later, Lee endured another tragedy when her teenage sweetheart died of heart failure while out on a lake in a rowing boat.

As a result, Lee struggled in school and was expelled several times. She did, however, show an interest in the theatre, and in an attempt to encourage her pursue something worthwhile, her parents agreed to send her to the L’École Medgyés pour la Technique du Théâtre in Paris for seven months.

She studied set design and lighting, but, as her son later wrote, she was “not one of the school’s star pupils. She was eighteen, gregarious, fabulously beautiful in the exactly the style of the period, and far more interested in celebrating her newfound freedom than in formal studies. Informally, what she was learning was what it meant to be a fully emancipated woman in charge of her own destiny.”

Lee returned to New York in 1926, where she attended the Experimental Theatre at Vassar College, studying Dramatic Production under Hallie Flannigan.

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Modeling in New York City

Lee’s career as a fashion model began that winter, when the publishing magnate Condé Nast reputedly saved her from being hit by oncoming traffic as she tried to cross the road in Manhattan. Impressed by her good looks, he offered her a job as a model for Vogue.

She was on the cover of both the British and American March 1927 editions. Subsequently, she worked with some of the greatest fashion photographers of the time including Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene.

Lee was hugely successful as a model, but quickly decided that she would “rather take a picture than be one.”

She abandoned modeling altogether when, in July 1928, a photograph taken of her by Edward Steichen was used as a advertisement for Kotex sanitary towels. At the time, feminine hygiene was considered far too personal and delicate to discuss in public, and after the image was the focal point of a massive nationwide advertising campaign, Lee found herself out on a limb — though also proud of the scandal it had caused.

 

On the other side of the camera in Paris

Lee moved to Paris in 1929, and sought out the Surrealist artist Man Ray. For several years she was his muse, lover, confidant, and collaborator, and she also established her own photographic studio in the city. Her portrait photography was highly sought after by writers, artists, socialites, and royalty — she even photographed the pet lizard of a French socialite.

However, it was her Surrealist photographs that are probably best known from this period. Alongside Man Ray, she experimented with juxtaposition — the technique of combining two elements within the same photo — and solarization, which partially reverses the positive and negative spaces of a photo, producing halo-like outlines that emphasize both light and shadow.

Even outside of the studio, her work had a quirky style. Later, her son Antony wrote, “The thing that became her distinctive, Surrealist style was what I call the ‘found image.’ She takes a photograph of, perhaps, an everyday occurrence, and she does it in such a way that it becomes an image that is containing ‘the marvelous.’”

While in Paris, Lee became part of the Surrealist circle of artists, including Paul and Nusch Éluard, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, and Joan Miró.

According to Antony, “When Lee arrived in Paris she had, in a way, been a Surrealist for some time — before the movement even had a name — because she had that determination to pursue her life free of the constraints of society which the Surrealists were already rebelling against. They wanted to create a new world which was not governed by religion or law or whatever…The Surrealist movement was going in tremendous force, and she was ready-made for it, and it for her.”

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New York and Egypt

She and Man Ray separated in 1932. Lee returned to New York to establish another studio there with her younger brother Erik. She specialized in advertising and celebrity portraits, including photographs of actresses Lilian Harvey and Gertrude Lawrence, and continued to experiment with Surrealist styles and techniques.

Her work was included in Julian Levy’s exhibition Modern European Photographers in 1932, and he subsequently gave her a one-woman show which brought her work to the attention of the art world. Soon afterwards, she was listed by Vanity Fair as one of the “most distinguished living photographers.”

She married the wealthy Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey in 1934, and moved with him to Cairo. She became fascinated with the idea of desert travel, and photographed the pyramids, desert, villages and ruins.

The photographs show a sense of dislocation, perhaps drawn from her experiences as an expatriate, and her best-known Egyptian image, Portrait of Space, 1937, views the desert through a torn fly screen door, turning it into a dream-like, Surrealist space.

Lee continued to travel to Europe, and during a return visit to Paris in 1937 she met Roland Penrose, a Surrealist artist. They began an affair, and in 1939 she officially left Bey and moved with Penrose to London.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
See also: 8 Female Journalists of the World War II Era
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Grim Glory: The World War II Years

In London, Lee met Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue. It was a connection that would prove vital for both Lee and for the magazine when, in 1940, Lee photographed London during and after the Blitz. Vogue published these photos, along with several photo essays by Lee about the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

It not only gave Lee an outlet for her photography in a new country and with a new subject, but it also helped to change Vogue’s reputation from solely a luxury fashion magazine — an indulgence that wasn’t much in demand during the war years — to a magazine that also published serious news.

Lee also published her images in a book, Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire (1941).

By 1943 she had become an accredited war correspondent through Condé Nast Publications, one of the very few women to do so, and in 1944 teamed up with Life photojournalist David E. Scherman.

She became the first female photojournalist to follow the US Army as it advanced on the front lines, and photographed major events such as the battle of Saint-Malo, the Liberation of Paris, and the liberation of both the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. She also taught herself to write articles, and the pieces that accompanied the photographs in print were almost always her own.

Lee was unsure whether the photos from the concentration camps would be publishable, given the horrific subject matter, but she sent them back to Vogue with a telegram: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE.” In June 1945, American Vogue printed the photos under the title, “Believe It.”

In 1945, she traveled throughout Eastern and Central Europe, documenting the horrific aftermath of the war on mostly ordinary people, and had an eye for the detail of combat that her male counterparts often overlooked.

As Meredith Herndon wrote for The Smithsonian, “Miller’s eye for Surrealist elements resulted in haunting photos that juxtaposed images of ordinary beauty with violence and destruction.”

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After the war

Lee married Roland Penrose in 1947, and gave birth to their son Antony at the age of forty. The family moved out of London to Farleys, a farm in the East Sussex countryside.

She continued to cover fashion, art, and celebrity culture for Vogue, and Farleys became known as a gathering place for the Surrealists. Many of Lee’s more intimate (and now iconic) photographs, of friends including Man Ray, Picasso, Eileen Agar, Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, were taken here.

Sadly, she suffered from severe (and at that time undiagnosed) post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifested in alcoholism and depression, and never spoke of her war work to her son, Antony.

In the early 1950s, Lee moved away from professional photography. Her final tongue-in-cheek piece for Vogue, “Working Guests” (1953), showed major art world figures (such as Alfred H. Barr, Jr., then the director of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC) feeding the pigs at Farleys.

 

Last years

In the last two decades of her life, Lee managed what her son would later call “the most astonishing achievement of her whole career … self-recovery … somehow she found the strength to get her drinking under control.”

A large part of this recovery came through cooking. Lee had given up photography, but she still longed for a creative outlet, and sent herself to the Cordon Bleu cookery school in Paris for six months.

Cooking, her son wrote, was “a kind of displacement activity for the demons that must have been rushing around inside her head all the time.” She became an award-winning cook, known for her Surrealism-inspired dishes such as green chicken and blue fish.

Lee died at Farleys in July 1977 of cancer at the age of seventy.

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Legacy: Redefining femininity

After Lee Millers’s death, Antony and his wife discovered some sixty thousand negatives and twenty thousand photographic prints, along with contact sheets, writings, and documents, all boxed up in the attic at Farleys.

From the 1980s, Antony worked to archive and promote her photographic work, which had been largely forgotten by the art world. Farleys is now the home of the Lee Miller Archive, along with a gallery which hosts rotating exhibitions.

Her work has also been shown in several major retrospectives, including at the Imperial War Museum and V&A Museum in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico.

Most recently, her war work has been the focus of the 2023 film Lee, produced by and starring Kate Winslet. Years of research went into making the film, along with a great deal of collaboration with Antony, and Kate Winslet reportedly spent days in the archives at Farleys.

According to Antony, “Other attempts to make a feature film about Lee had failed in the past, but this one succeeded…it owes much of its force and integrity to being a film about a women made by women.” On Lee, Kate Winslet said, “I think we live in a time when femininity is starting to mean something new, but Lee was already redefining femininity as resilience and power and courage and tenacity.”

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at  Elodie Rose Barnes.

More about Lee Miller’s work

Women at War:  The National WWII Museum Photographer Lee Miller’s Second World War Lee Miller Archives

Further reading:

Lee Miller: On Both Sides of the Camera by Carolyn Burke (2006)Lee Miller’s War: Beyond D-Day by Antony Penrose (2020)The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose (2021)Lee Miller: Fashion in Wartime Britain by Robin Muir and Amber Butchart
(Lee Miller Archives Publishing, 2021)Lee Miller: Photographs by Antony Penrose and Kate Winslet (2023)Lee Miller Man Ray: Fashion, Love, War by Victoria Noel-Johnson (2023)Lee Miller: The True Story (Sky Original – Kate Winslet and Antony Penrose
discussing the film Lee) on YouTube

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James Weldon Johnson’s Analysis of Phillis Wheatley’s Poetry

Presented here is an analysis by James Weldon Johnson of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, one of the first women to be published in colonial America, and the first person in the U.S. to have a book of poetry published while enslaved.

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was a writer, educator, poet, diplomat, and civil rights activist. He helmed the NAACP from 1920 to 1930. He was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, or as it was then called, The New Negro movement.

The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), chosen and edited by Johnson, was one of a handful of significant anthologies of Black literature to be published in the 1920s. The segment following, in which he provides and analysis of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, is a portion of the Johnson’s Preface to this collection.

 Phillis Wheatley’s Poetry: An Analysis by James Weldon Johnson

In 1761 a slave ship landed a cargo of slaves in Boston. Among them was a little girl seven or eight years of age. She attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy gentleman of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his wife.

Mrs. Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She noticed the girl’s quick mind and determined to give her opportunity for its development. Twelve years later Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was brought out in London, where Phillis was for several months an object of great curiosity and attention.

Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful place in American literature. By some sort of conspiracy she is kept out of most of the books, especially the text-books on literature used in the schools.

Of course, she is not a great American poet—and in her day there were no great American poets—but she is an important American poet. Her importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she is the first in order of time of all the women poets of America. And she is among the first of all American poets to issue a volume.

It seems strange that the books generally give space to a mention of Urian Oakes, President of Harvard College, and to quotations from the crude and lengthy elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples from the execrable versified version of the Psalms made by the New England divines, and yet deny a place to Phillis Wheatley …

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More about Phillis Wheatley
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Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little over twenty years. She published her volume of poems, “The Tenth Muse,” in 1750. Let us strike a comparison between the two.

Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy, cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Bay Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us take them both at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza is from Anne’s poem entitled “Contemplation”:

While musing thus with contemplation fed,
And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,
The sweet tongued Philomel percht o’er my head,
And chanted forth a most melodious strain,
Which rapt me so with wonder and delight,
I judged my hearing better than my sight,
And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight.

And the following is from Phillis’s poem entitled “Imagination”:  

Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
The empyreal palace of the thundering God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind,
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above,
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul.

We do not think the Black woman suffers much by comparison with the white. Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis: “Religion has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet; her poems are beneath contempt.”

It is quite likely that Jefferson’s criticism was directed more against religion than against Phillis’ poetry. On the other hand, General George Washington wrote her with his own hand a letter in which he thanked her for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later, received her with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge.

It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to apply to George Washington the phrase, “First in peace.” The phrase occurs in her poem addressed to “His Excellency, General George Washington,” written in 1775.

The encomium, “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen” was originally used in the resolutions presented to Congress on the death of Washington, December, 1799.

Phillis Wheatley’s poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth Century. She wrote when Pope and Gray were supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her model. Had she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or Keats or Shelley, she would have done greater work.

As it is, her work must not be judged by the work and standards of a later day, but by the work and standards of her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method of criticism she stands out as one of the important characters in the making of American literature, without any allowances for her sex or her antecedents.

According to A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry, compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, more than one hundred Negroes in the United States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size from pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three hundred pages. About thirty of these writers fill in the gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in this country from Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of Queens-Village, Long Island.

In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight lines in length, entitled “An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with Penettential Cries.”

In 1788 he published “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” These two poems do not include all that Hammon wrote.

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10 Poems by Phillis Wheatley

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The poets between Phillis Wheatley and [Paul Laurence] Dunbar must be considered more in the light of what they attempted than of what they accomplished. Many of them showed marked talent, but barely a half dozen of them demonstrated even mediocre mastery of technique in the use of poetic material and forms …

Only very seldom does Phillis Wheatley sound a native note. Four times in single lines she refers to herself as “Afric’s muse.” In a poem of admonition addressed to the students at the “University of Cambridge in New England” she refers to herself as follows:

Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
An Ethiop tells you ’tis your greatest foe.

But one looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” she says:

Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God and there’s a Saviour too;
Once I redemption neither sought or knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
‘Their color is a diabolic dye.’
 Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain,
 May be refined, and join th’ angelic train.

In the poem addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, she speaks of freedom and makes a reference to the parents from whom she was taken as a child, a reference which cannot but strike the reader as rather unimpassioned:

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood;

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat;
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labor in my parents’ breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d;
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

The bulk of Phillis Wheatley’s work consists of poems addressed to people of prominence. Her book was dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, at whose house she spent the greater part of her time while in England. On his repeal of the Stamp Act, she wrote a poem to King George III, whom she saw later; another poem she wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, whom she knew.

A number of her verses were addressed to other persons of distinction. Indeed, it is apparent that Phillis was far from being a democrat. She was far from being a democrat not only in her social ideas but also in her political ideas; unless a religious meaning is given to the closing lines of her ode to General Washington, she was a decided royalist:

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine
With gold unfading, Washington! be thine.

Nevertheless, she was an ardent patriot. Her ode to General Washington (1775), her spirited poem, “On Major General Lee” (1776) and her poem, “Liberty and Peace,” written in celebration of the close of the war, reveal not only strong patriotic feeling but an understanding of the issues at stake.

In her poem, “On Major General Lee,” she makes her hero reply thus to the taunts of the British commander into whose hands he has been delivered through treachery:

                  O arrogance of tongue!
    And wild ambition, ever prone to wrong!
    Believ’st thou, chief, that armies such as thine
    Can stretch in dust that heaven-defended line?
    In vain allies may swarm from distant lands,
    And demons aid in formidable bands,
    Great as thou art, thou shun’st the field of fame,
    Disgrace to Britain and the British name!
    When offer’d combat by the noble foe,
    (Foe to misrule) why did the sword forego
    The easy conquest of the rebel-land?
    Perhaps TOO easy for thy martial hand.

    What various causes to the field invite!
    For plunder YOU, and we for freedom fight,
    Her cause divine with generous ardor fires,
    And every bosom glows as she inspires!
    Already thousands of your troops have fled
    To the drear mansions of the silent dead:
    Columbia, too, beholds with streaming eyes
    Her heroes fall—’tis freedom’s sacrifice!
    So wills the power who with convulsive storms
    Shakes impious realms, and nature’s face deforms;
    Yet those brave troops, innum’rous as the sands,
    One soul inspires, one General Chief commands;
    Find in your train of boasted heroes, one
    To match the praise of Godlike Washington.
    Thrice happy Chief in whom the virtues join,
    And heaven taught prudence speaks the man divine.

What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no small degree to her education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known Alexander Pope by heart.

And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a wealthy and cultured family—a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten that she was only about thirty years old when she died.

The impulsion or the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But, whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her.

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You may also enjoy:
The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

 

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Women Translators of the Past (English, French & Spanish)

Women translators in history have been forgotten for too long before being recently acknowledged in Wikipedia thanks to its many contributors.  Marie Lebert has compiled brief biographies on women translators of the past into pdfs in three languages:

Women Translators of the Past (English) Quelques Traductrices du Passé (French) Algunas Traductoras del Pasado (Spanish)

Also by Marie Lebert on this site:

Five Women Translators to Celebrate on International Translation Day Laura and Eleanor Marx, Translators of Karl Marx 10 Lost Ladies of Literary Translation: A Tribute

Marie Lebert is a French translator and librarian who has worked for international organizations and global projects in several countries. She is currently based in Australia. She writes about translation and translators – past and present — with a focus on women translators.

Marie holds a PhD in linguistics (digital publishing) from the Sorbonne, Paris. Her articles, essays and ebooks are available online in English, French and Spanish at Marie Lebert. 

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Bronze by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922) – full text

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966) was a prominent poet associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement. Following is the full text of Bronze: A Book of Verse (1922), her second collection of published poetry.

Bronze was preceded by The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918). Next came An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and many years later, Share My World (1962). Her poems were also published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, particularly in the 1920s.

In her poetry, Georgia addressed issues of race as well as universal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. Of all her works, Bronze most direction addressed issues of race and racism. Bronze: A Book of Verse is in the public domain.

Learn more about Georgia Douglas Johnson
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Bronze: A Book of Verse

Foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois
Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in 1922 — and know it not so much in fact as in feeling, apprehension, unrest and delicate yet stern thought — must read Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Bronze.

Much of it will not touch this reader and that, and some of it will mystify and puzzle them as a sort of reiteration and over-emphasis. But none can fail to be caught here and there by a word — a phrase — a period that tells a life history or even paints the history of a generation.

Can you not see that marching of the mantled with “Voices strange to ecstasy?” Have you ever looked on the “twilight faces” of their throngs, or seen the black mother with her son when “Her heart is sandaling his feet?” Or can you not conceive that infinite sorrow of a dark child wandering the world: “Seeking the breast of an unknown face!”

I hope Mrs. Johnson will have wide reading. Her word is simple, sometimes trite, but it is singularly sincere and true, and as a revelation of the soul struggle of the women of a race it is invaluable. — W. E. B. Du Bois. New York, August 4, 1922.

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Sonnet to the Mantled
And they shall rise and cast their mantles by,
Erect and strong and visioned, in the day
That rings the knell of Curfew o’er the sway
Of prejudice — who reels with mortal cry
To lift no more her leprous, blinded eye.
Reft of the fetters, far more cursed than they
Which held dominion o’er human clay.
The spirit soars aloft where rainbows lie.
 
Like joyful exiles swift returning home —
The rhythmic chanson of their eager feet.
While voices strange to ecstasy, long dumb.
Break forth in major rhapsodies, full sweet.
Into the very star-shine, lo! they come
Wearing the bays of victory complete! 

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Sonnet to Those Who See But Darkly
Their gaze uplifting from shoals of despair
Like phantoms groping enswathed from the light
Up from miasmic depths, children of night,
Surge to the piping of Hope’s dulcet lay,
Souled like the lily, whose splendors declare
God’s mazèd paradox — purged of all blight.
Out from the quagmire, unsullied and fair.
 
Life holds her arms o’er the festering way,
Smiles, as their faith-sandalled rushes prevail,
Slowly the sun rides the marge of the day.
Wine to the lips sorely anguished and pale;
On, ever on, do the serried ranks sway
Charging the ultimate, rending the veil. 

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Brotherhood
Come, brothers all!
Shall we not wend
The blind-way of our prison-world
By sympathy entwined?
Shall we not make
The bleak way for each other’s sake
Less rugged and unkind?
O let each throbbing heart repeat
The faint note of another’s beat
To lift a chanson for the feet
That stumble down life’s checkered street.

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Let Me Not Lose My Dream
Let me not lose my dream, e’en though I scan the veil
     with eyes unseeing through their glaze of tears,
Let me not falter, though the rungs of fortune perish
     as I fare above the tumult, praying purer air,
Let me not lose the vision, gird me. Powers that toss
     the worlds, I pray!
Hold me, and guard, lest anguish tear my dreams away!

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Let Me Not Hate
Let me not hate, although the bruising world decries my peace,
Gives me no quarter, hounds me while I sleep;
Would snuff the candles of my soul and sear my inmost dreamings.
Let me not hate, though girt by vipers, green and hissing through the dark;
I fain must love. God help me keep the altar-gleams that flicker wearily, anon,
On down the world’s grim night!

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Calling Dreams
The right to make my dreams come true
I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand.

Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now, at length, I rise, I wake!
And stride into the morning-break !

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Desire
Ope! ye everlasting doors, unto my soul’s demand,
I would go forward, fare beyond these dusty boulevards,
Faint lights and fair allure me all insistently
And I must stand within the halls resplendent, of my dreams.

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Sorrow Singers
Hear their viol-voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces
Through a mist of falling tears!

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The Cross
All day the world’s mad mocking strife,
The venomed prick of probing knife,
The baleful, subtle leer of scorn
That rims the world from morn to morn,
While reptile-visions writhe and creep
Into the very arms of sleep
To quench the fitful burnished gleams:
A crucifixion in my dreams!

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Prejudice
These fell miasmic rings of mist, with ghoulish menace bound,
Like noose-horizons tightening my little world around,
They still the soaring will to wing, to dance, to speed away.
And fling the soul insurgent back into its shell of clay:

Beneath incrusted silences, a seething Etna lies.
The fire of whose furnaces may sleep — but never dies!

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Laocoon
This spirit-choking atmosphere
With deadly serpent-coil
Entwines my soaring-upwardness
And chains me to the soil,
Where’er I seek with eager stride
To gain yon gleaming height,
These noisesome fetters coil aloft
And snare my buoyant flight.

O, why these aspirations bold,
These rigours of desire.
That surge within so ceaselessly
Like living tongues of fire?
And why these glowing forms of hope
That scintillate and shine,
If naught of all that burnished dream
Can evermore be mine?
It cannot be, fate does not mock,
And man’s untoward decree
Shall not forever thus confine
My life’s entirety,
My every fibre fierce rebels
Against this servile role,
And all my being broods to break
This death-grip from my soul!

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Moods 
My heart is pregnant with a great despair
With much beholding of my people’s care,
‘Mid blinded prejudice and nurtured wrong,
Exhaling wantonly the days along:
I mark Faith’s fragile craft of cheering light
Tossing imperiled on the sea of night,
And then, enanguished, comes my heart’s low cry,
“God, God! I crave to learn the reason why!”
Again, in spirit loftily I soar
With winged vision through earth’s outer door.
In such an hour, it is mine to see,
In frowning fortune smiling destiny!

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Hegira
Oh, black man, why do you northward roam, and leave
     all the farm lands bare?
Is your house not warm, tightly thatched from storm,
     and a larder replete your share?
And have you not schools, fit with books and tools the
     steps of your young to guide?
Then what do you seek, in the north cold and bleak,
     ‘mid the whirl of its teeming tide?

I have toiled in your cornfields, and parched in the sun,
I have bowed ‘neath your load of care,
I have patiently garnered your bright golden grain, in
     season of storm and fair.
With a smile I have answered your glowering gloom,
     while my wounded heart quivering bled.
Trailing mute in your wake, as your rosy dawn breaks,
     while I curtain the mound of my dead.

Though my children are taught in the schools you have
     wrought, they are blind to the sheen of the sky,
For the brand of your hand, casts a pall o’er the land,
     that enshadows the gleam of the eye.
My sons, deftly sapped of the brawn-hood of man, self-
     rejected and impotent stand,

My daughters, unhaloed, unhonored, undone, feed the
     lust of a dominant land.

I would not remember, yet could not forget, how the
     hearts beating true to your own.
You’ve tortured, and wounded, and filtered their blood
     ‘till a budding Hegira has blown.

Unstrange is the pathway to Calvary’s hill, which I
     wend in my dumb agony,
Up its perilous height, in the pale morning light, to
     dissever my own from the tree.

And so I’m away, where the sky-line of day sets the
     arch of its rainbow afar,
To the land of the north, where the symbol of worth
      sets the broad gates of combat ajar!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Passing of the Ex-Slave
Swift melting into yesterday,
The tortured hordes of ebon-clay;
No more is heard the plaintive strain,
The rhythmic chaunting of their pain.

Their mounded bodies dimly rise
To fill the gulf of sacrifice,
And o’er their silent hearts below
The mantled millions softly go.

Some few remaining still abide.
Gnarled sentinels of time and tide.
Now mellowed by a chastened glow
Which lighter hearts will never know.

Winding into the silent way,
Spent with the travail of the day,
So royal in their humble might
These uncrowned Pilgrims of the Night!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Octoroon
One drop of midnight in the dawn of life’s pulsating stream
Marks her an alien from her kind, a shade amid its gleam;
Forevermore her step she bends insular, strange, apart —
And none can read the riddle of her wildly warring heart.

The stormy current of her blood beats like a mighty sea
Against the man-wrought iron bars of her captivity.
For refuge, succor, peace and rest, she seeks that humble fold
Whose every breath is kindliness, whose hearts are purest gold.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Aliens
(To You — Everywhere! Dedicated)

They seem to smile as others smile, the masquerader’s art
Conceals them, while, in verity, they’re eating out their heart.
Betwixt the two contending stones of crass humanity
They lie, the fretted fabric of a dual dynasty.

A single drop, a sable strain debars them from their own,-—
The others — fold them furtively, but God! they are alone.
Blown by the fickle winds of fate far from the traveled mart
To die, when they have quite consumed the morsel of their heart.
When man shall lift his lowered eyes to meet the moon of truth,
Shall break the shallow shell of pride and wax in ways of ruth,
He cannot hate, for love shall reign untrammelled in the soul,
While peace shall spread a rainbow o’er the earth from pole to pole.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Concord
Nor shall I in sorrow repine,
But offer a paean of praise
To the infinite God of my days
Who marshals the pivoting spheres
Through the intricate maze of the years,
Who loosens the luminous flood
That lightens the purlieus of men,
I shall not in sorrow repine
To break the eternal Amen!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Mother
The mother soothes her mantled child
With incantation sad and wild;
A deep compassion brims her eye
And stills upon her lips, the sigh.

Her thoughts are leaping down the years,
O’er branding bars, through seething tears,
Her heart is sandaling his feet
Adown the world’s corroding street.

Then, with a start she dons a smile
His tender yearnings to beguile.
And only God will ever know
The wordless measure of her woe.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Maternity
Proud?
Perhaps— and yet
I cannot say with surety
That I am happy thus to be
Responsible for this young life’s embarking.
Is he not thrall to prevalent conditions?
Does not the day loom dark apace
To weave its cordon of disgrace
Around his lifted throat?
Is not this mezzotint enough and surfeit
For such prescience?
Ah, did I dare
Recall the pulsing life I gave,
And fold him in the kindly grave!

Proud?
Perhaps — could I but ever so faintly scan
The broad horizon of a man
Swept fair for his dominion —
So hesitant and half-afraid
I view this babe of sorrow!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Black Woman
Don’t knock at my door, little child,
I cannot let you in.
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth.
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!

. . . . . . . . . . .

“One of the Least of These, My Little One”
The infant eyes look out amazed upon the frowning earth,
A stranger, in a land now strange, child of the mantled-birth;
Waxing, he wonders more and more; the scowling grows apace;
A world, behind its barring doors, reviles his ebon face:
Yet from this maelstrom issues forth a God-like entity.
That loves a world all loveless, and smiles on Calvary!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Shall I Say, “My Son, You’re Branded?”
Shall I say, “My son, you’re branded in this country’s pageantry,
By strange subtleties you’re tethered, and no forum sets you free?”
Shall I mark the young lights fading through your soul-enchannelled eye,
As the dusky pall of shadows screen the highway of your sky?
Or shall I, with love prophetic, bid you dauntlessly arise.
Spurn the handicap that clogs you, taking what the world denies,
Bid you storm the sullen fortress wrought by prejudice and wrong
With a faith that shall not falter, in your heart and on your tongue!

. . . . . . . . . . .

My Boy
I hear you singing happily,
My boy of tarnished mien,
Lifting your limpid, trustful gaze
In innocence serene.

A thousand javelins of pain
Assault my heaving breast
When I behold the storm of years
That beat without your nest.

O sing, my lark, your matin song
Of joyous rhapsody,
Distil the sweetness of the hours
In gladsome ecstasy.

For time awaits your buoyant flight
Across the bar of years.
Sing, sing your song, my bonny lark,
Before it melts in tears!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Guardianship
That dusky child upon your knee
Is breath of God’s eternity;
Direct his vision to the height —
Let naught obscure his royal right.

Although the highways to renown
Are iron-barred by fortune’s frown,
‘Tis his to forge the master-key
That wields the locks of destiny!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Utopia
God grant you wider vision, clearer skies, my son,
With morning’s rosy kisses on your brow;
May your wild yearnings know repose,
And storm-clouds break to smiles
As you sweep on with spreading wings
Unto a waiting sunset!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Little Son
The very acme of my woe,
The pivot of my pride,
My consolation, and my hope
Deferred, but not denied.
The substance of my every dream,
The riddle of my plight,
The very world epitomized
In turmoil and delight.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Benediction
Go forth, my son,
Winged by my heart’s desire!
Great reaches, yet unknown,
Await
For your possession.
I may not, if I would.
Retrace the way with you,
My pilgrimage is through,
But life is calling you!
Fare high and far, my son,
A new day has begun.
Thy star-ways must be won!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Credo
I believe in the ultimate justice of Fate;
That the races of men front the sun in their turn;
That each soul holds the title to infinite wealth
In fee to the will as it masters itself;
That the heart of humanity sounds the same tone
In impious jungle, or sky-kneeling fane.
I believe that the key to the life-mystery
Lies deeper than reason and further than death.
I believe that the rhythmical conscience within
Is guidance enough for the conduct of men.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Promise
Through the moil and the gloom they have issued
To the steps of the upwinding hill,

Where the sweet, dulcet pipes of tomorrow
In their preluding rhapsodies trill.

With a thud comes a stir in the bosom,
As there steals on the sight from afar,

Through a break of a cloud’s coiling shadow
The gleam of a bright morning star!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Suppliant
Long have I beat with timid hands upon life’s leaden door,
Praying the patient, futile prayer my fathers prayed before,
Yet I remain without the close, unheeded and unheard,
And never to my listening ear is borne the waited word.

Soft o’er the threshold of the years there comes this counsel cool:
The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Hope
Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
The world has its motion, all things pass away.
No night is omnipotent, there must be day.
The oak tarries long in the depth of the seed,
But swift is the season of nettle and weed.
Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade.
And rise with the hour for which you were made.
The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man
Revolve in the orb of an infinite plan.
We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
And each has his hour — to dwell in the sun!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Cosmopolite
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
How deftly does the gardener blend
This rose and that
To bud a new creation,
More gorgeous 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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Perspective
Some day
I shall be glad that it was mine to be
A dark fore-runner of a race burgeoning;
I then shall know
The secret of life’s Calvary,
And bless the thorns
That wound me!

. . . . . . . . . . .

When I Rise Up
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 upon the things that fetter me.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Faith
The faint lose faith
When in the tomb their all is laid,
And there returns
No echoing of weal or woe.
The strong hope on,
They see the clods close over head,
The grass grow green.
No word is said.
And yet —
A little world within the world
Are we,
Daily our hearts’ high yearnings fade,
Are buried!
New ones are made, —
Are crucified!
And yet —

. . . . . . . . . . .

We Face the Future
The hour is big with sooth and sign, with errant men at war,
While blood of alien, friend, and foe imbues the land afar,
And we, with sable faces pent, move with the vanguard line.
Shod with a faith that Springtime keeps, and all the stars opine.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Soldier
Though I should weep until the judgment,
How would it serve —
Brave men are fighting, women speed them,
‘Tis a day
Of crucial conflict!
My son, sometimes it seems I’d rather hold
You safe beneath my heart
Than send you forth!
But lo! The sun is red and weaker children go!
Though I should weep until the judgment.
How would it serve!
I’ll close my eyes and smile, O Son of Mine,
Your cause is kingly!
Step proud and confident, worthy your mother;
Be firm and brave, O Son of Mine, be strong.
For terror waxeth,
Speed swift away.
Though I should weep until the judgment . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

Homing Braves
There’s music in the measured tread
Of those returning from the dead
Like scattered flowers from a plain
So lately crimson, with the slain.

No more the sound of shuffled feet
Shall mark the poltroon on the street,
Nor shifting, sodden, downcast eye
Reveal the man afraid to die.

They shall have paid full, utterly
The price of peace across the sea,
When, with uplifted glance, they come
To claim a kindly welcome home.

Nor shall the old-time daedal sting
Of prejudice, their manhood wing.
Nor heights, nor depths, nor living streams
Stand in the pathway of their dreams!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Taps
They are embosomed in the sod,
In still and tranquil leisure,
Their lives they’ve cast like trifles down,
To serve their country’s pleasure.

Nor bugle call, nor mother’s voice.
Nor moody mob’s unreason,
Shall break their solace and repose
Through swiftly changing season.

O graves of men who lived and died
Afar from life’s high pleasures,
Fold them in tenderly and warm
With manifold fond measures.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Peace
Peace on a thousand hills and dales,
Peace in the hearts of men
While kindliness reclaims the soil
Where bitterness has been.

The night of strife is drifting past,
The storm of shell has ceased.
Disrupted is the cordon fell,
Sweet charity released.

Forth from the shadow, swift we come
Wrought in the flame together.
All men as one beneath the sun
In brotherhood forever.

Further reading

Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson 8 Black Women Playwrights of the Early 20th Century Georgia Douglas Johnson on Poetry Foundation

The post Bronze by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922) – full text appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

18 Poems by Effie Lee Newsome

Effie Lee Newsome (1885–1979), a writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance, wrote poetry that was widely published in journals and anthologies of the 1920s. Notably, these included NAACP’s The Crisis and the Urban League’s Opportunity, and Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen.

Mary Effie Lee was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Wilburforce, Ohio. She took classes at Wilberforce University, Oberlin College, the Philadelphia Academy of the Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania, though she didn’t complete a degree.

As the editor of the children’s column “Little Page” in The Crisis, Effie Lee was one of the first  to write poems expressly for Black children. Her poetry encouraged younger readers to appreciate their worth and beauty.

In 1920, she married Rev. Henry Nesby Newsome. In her biographical note in Caroling Dusk, 1927, a highly regarded anthology of poetry by Black writers, she describes herself as “ a lover of the out-of-doors, and of the beautiful.” The love of the natural world in particular is amply reflected in her poetry.

After her husband’s death in 1937, Effie Lee returned to her hometown of Wilburforce, Ohio, where she worked as a children’s librarian.

Though Effie Lee Newsome never lived in New York City, her thoughtful poetry became a fixture in the era of the Harlem Renaissance movement. A volume containing dozens of her poems for children, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers, was published in 1940. 

 

 

Poems by Effie Lee NewsomeO Autumn, Autumn!SunsetMagnificatThe Bronze LegacyExodusCantabileNegro Street Serenade (in the South)CapriccioSun DiskSassafras TeaPansyThe QuiltSky PicturesAt the PoolBluebirdThe LordA Black Boy DreamsThe Baker’s Boy

. . . . . . . . . .

O Autumn, Autumn!

O Autumn, Autumn! O pensive light and wistful sound!
Cold haunted sky, green-haunted ground!
When, wan, the dead leaves flutter by
Deserted realms of butterfly!
When robins band themselves together
To seek the soul of sun-steeped weather;
And all of summer’s largesse goes
For lands of olive and the rose! 

(The Crisis, October 1918)

. . . . . . . . . .

Sunset

Since Poets have told of sunset, 
What is left for me to tell?
I can only say that I saw the day
Press crimson lips to horizon gray,
And kiss the earth farewell.

(The Crisis,May 1921)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

Magnificat

In lapis lazuli—
Such azure shot with gold!—
On domes of sanctity
That chiseled tribute hold,
Or breathe the Word through breath of brush
In ripened tones and old;
Through silence and in state—
Still splendors everywhere!—
Earth’s tribute from earth’s great
Steeped deep in incensed air,
With praise imprint on wall and floor,
And even shadows there;
Cathedrals strive to voice
The thanks of mild Mary,
Who found herself the choice
For immortality,
When, lowly-born, there came the word
Earth’s Mother she should be.
God, we, thy lowly race,
Would thank thee for such grace.
Though we have never been
Welcome at earthly inn,
Thy glorious Son swung wide
Those gates that scoff at pride.
And guard a Realm of Equity,
Wherein abides the Wisdom Holy
Which shapes high purpose for the lowly.

(The Crisis, December 1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Bronze Legacy

’Tis a noble gift to be brown, all brown,
     Like the strongest things that make up this earth,
Like the mountains grave and grand,
     Even like the very land,
     Even like the trunks of trees—
     Even oaks, to be like these!
God builds His strength in bronze.
To be brown like thrush and lark!
     Like the subtle wren so dark!
Nay, the king of beasts wears brown;
     Eagles are of this same hue.
I thank God, then, I am brown.
     Brown has mighty things to do.
(The Crisis, October 1922)

 

 . . . . . . . . .

Exodus

Rank fennel and broom
Grow wanly beside
The cottage and room
We once occupied,
But sold for the snows!
The dahoon berry weeps in blood,
I know,
Watched by the crow–
I’ve seen both grow
In those weird wastes of Dixie!

(The Crisis, January 1925)

. . . . . . . . . .

Cantabile

Green holly has a lovely leaf
to make the Christmas bright,
Green cedar gives a spicy smell
On Christmas eve at night.
Green candles wear a joyous look,
Each with its golden light.
   Good holly, cedars,
   Candles gay!
   Come Christmas sprite!
   Come Christmas fay!
You’ve never known a brighter day
For joining childhood in its play!

(The Crisis, December 1925)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

Negro Street Serenade (in the South)

The quavering zigzag of the fiddle’s notes;
The thumping “tum-tum” of the banjo and guitar;
The gauzy quiver, flutter of the fiddle;
The measured muffled thud of that guitar!
And then a voice breaks forth—
Loose, careless, mellow—
A wealth of voice that rolls, soars,
Rolls and falls,
A reveling, rich voice,
Deeper than the banjo’s;
With more of melody than fiddles’ trebles,
Yet with that subtle minor trembling through 
Which shakes the viol’s slender vibrance
As the winds might—
And all of this out in a half-hushed autumn dusk!
The autumn air itself is tense, suspended,
And into this that most spontaneous song!
Which ripples on and floats and floats
Midst “thum” of banjo
And rhythmic background of that constant taut guitar,
And travels with the wavers of the fiddle,
To float and rise and rest with moon and star! 

(The Crisis, July 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Capriccio

When soft suns of autumn just mock with a shadow,
When thin wind of autumn light blows,
Aye, Swallow, I’d follow,
And follow and follow—
I’d follow the petals of rose!

(The Crisis, September 1926)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

Sun Disk

Grant old Egypt dead, what words shall thank thee
For the tenuous touch that carved the portion,
And wrought apart the place unchanging
That marks the dark man’s challenge
From the ancient world of art?
That winged sun has wended through the ages,
And known its shape on silk and blinding page;
Been inset with the gems of burning jewels
By artisans who swing again the disk
On wings outspread, which sweep e’en centuries by!
Signet of Ra that the swart Pharoahs singled,
“Sons of the sun,”
When time and the russet mummy are lost in abyss,
And symbols and sun disk shall no longer bind death
By mystical strands to the cycles of earth,
That wisdom supernal which made wise the Pharoahs,
Will judge generations more knowing than they,
Which bury themselves deep in His Life Eternal,
That fain would fold races in Infinity.

(The Carolina Magazine, May 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Sassafras Tea

The sass’fras tea is red and clear
In my white china cup,
So pretty I keep peeping in
Before I drink it up.

I stir it with a silver spoon,
And sometimes I just hold
Al little tea inside the spoon,
Like it was lined with gold.

It makes me hungry just to smell
The nice hot sass’fras tea,
And that’s the one thing I really like
That they say’s good for me.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

 

. . . . . . . . .

Pansy

Oh, the blue blue bloom
On the velvet cheek
Of the little pansy’s face
That hides away so still and cool
In some soft garden place!
The tiger lily’s orange fires,
The red lights from the rose
Aren’t like the gloom on that blue cheek
Of the softest flower that grows!

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

The Quilt

I have the greatest fun at night,
When casement windows are all bright.
I make believe each one’s a square
Of some great quilt up in the air.

The blocks of gold have black between,
Wherever only night is seen.
It surely makes a mammoth quilt-
With bits of dark and checks of gilt-
To cover up the tired day
In such a cozy sort of way.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

Sky Pictures

Sometimes a right white mountain
Or great soft polar bear,
Or lazy little flocks of sheep
Move on in the blue air.
The mountains tear themselves like floss,
The bears all melt away.
The little sheep will drift apart
In such a sudden way.
And then new sheep and mountains come.
New polar bears appear
And roll and tumble on again
Up in the skies so clear.
The polar bears would like to get
Where polar bears belong.
The mountains try so hard to stand
In one place firm and strong.
The little sheep all want to stop
And pasture in the sky,
But never can these things be done,
Although they try and try!

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Baker’s Boy

The baker’s boy delivers loaves
All up and down our street.
His car is white, his clothes are white,
White to his very feet.
I wonder if he stays that way.
I don’t see how he does all day.
I’d like to watch him going home
When all the loaves are out.
His clothes must look quite different then,
At least I have no doubt.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

At the Pool

Like to stand right still awhile
Beside some forest pool.
The reeds around it smell so fresh,
The waters look so cool!
Sometimes I just hop in and wade,
And have a lot of fun,
Playing with bugs that dart across
The water in the sun.
They lodge here at this little pool—
All sorts ef bugs and things
That hop about its shady banks,
Or dart along with wings,
Or ‘scamper on the water top,
As water-striders go,
Or strange back-swimmers upside down,
Using their legs to row,
Or the stiff, flashing dragon flies,
The gentle demoiselle,
The clumsy, sturdy water-bugs,
And scorpions as well,
That come on top to get fresh air
From homes beneath the pool,
Where water-boatmen have their nooks,
On pebbles, as a rule.
And then, behold! Kingfisher comes,
That great big royal bird!
To him what is the dragon fly
That. kept the pool life stirred?
Or water-tigers terrible
That murder bugs all day?
Kingfisher comes, and each of these
Would hide itself away!
He swoops and swallows what he will,
A stone-fly or a frog.
Wing’d things rush frightened through the air,
Others to hole and log.
The little pool that held them all
I watch grow very bare,
But fisher knows his hide and seek—
He’ll find some one somewhere!

(The Crisis, February 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Bluebird

I just heard your soft smothered voice today!
I’m sure you’ll flit on in your lightwinged way,
Unmindful, undreaming of me,
Who have not yet seen you in blue and brown, 
But just heard your lush notes drip down, drip down
As showers from the black ash tree.

(The Crisis, April 1927)

 

. . . . . . . . . .

The Lord

Bring to me your heart all bleeding
When have I been known to mock men’s tears,
To scoff at men because their hearts were full,
Despise them in their grief?
I am the Comforter.
I make the lilies.
I am the merciful.
Hope in me.
Bring unto me the wounds that throb,
The sorrows of which you would not whisper.
I have known tears myself.
Tears cannot anger me.

(The Crisis, May 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

A Black Boy Dreams

I trot on with the silver streams,
And laugh and build my little dreams.
I trip on with the lively brooks
Through meadowland and wood.
Ha, ho! How merrily I run!
To dream and move along is fun.
I tread the meads of yesterday
Where once the Indians used to play.
The soil belonged to white men next…
How many changes it has known!
For now it is my father’s own!
I trot on with these silver streams, 
And laugh and build my little dreams,
Ha, ho, how merrily I run!
To dream yet move along is fun.

(The Crisis, October 1927)

  Discover more female poets of the Harlem Renaissance .

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Love Songs by Mina Loy (1915)

Mina Loy (1882 – 1966) was an English-born poet, playwright, and artist. She was lauded by her peers for her dense analyses of the female experience in early twentieth-century Western society. Here lasting impact is arguably as a modernist poet.

She was associated with other great minds and literary innovators of her time, like T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Beach, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and others.

“Love Songs,” a poem that first appeared in print in 1915, is among her best known works.

Analyses of “Love Songs” by Mina Loy:

The Early Poetry of Mina Loy

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Learn more about Mina Loy
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  Love Songs by Mina Loy

I

Spawn of fantasies
Sifting the appraisable
Pig Cupid his rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
“Once upon a time”
Pulls a weed white star-topped
Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane
I would an eye in a Bengal light
Eternity in a sky-rocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of saliva
 
These are suspect places
 
I must live in my lantern
Trimming subliminal flicker
Virginal to the bellows
Of experience
Colored glass.
 
 
II
 
At your mercy
Our Universe
Is only
A colorless onion
You derobe
Sheath by sheath
Remaining
A disheartening odour
About your nervy hands
 
 
III
 
Night
Heavy with shut-flower’s nightmares
———————————————
Noon
Curled to the solitaire
Core of the
Sun
 
 
IV
 
Evolution fall foul of
Sexual equality
Prettily miscalculate
Similitude
 
Unnatural selection
Breed such sons and daughters
As shall jibber at each other
Uninterpretable cryptonyms
Under the moon
 
Give them some way of braying brassily
For caressive calling
Or to homophonous hiccoughs
Transpose the laugh
Let them suppose that tears
Are snowdrops or molasses
Or anything
Than human insufficiences
Begging dorsal vertebrae
 
Let meeting be the turning
To the antipodean
And Form a blur
Anything
Than to seduce them
To the one
As simple satisfaction
For the other
 
V
 
Shuttle-cock and battle-door
A little pink-love
And feathers are strewn
 
VI
 
Let Joy go solace-winged
To flutter whom she may concern
 
VII
 
Once in a mezzanino
The starry ceiling
Vaulted an unimaginable family
Bird-like abortions
With human throats
And Wisdom’s eyes
Who wore lamp-shade red dresses
And woolen hair
 
One bore a baby
In a padded porte-enfant
Tied with a sarsenet ribbon
To her goose’s wings
 
But for the abominable shadows
I would have lived
Among their fearful furniture
To teach them to tell me their secrets
Before I guessed
— Sweeping the brood clean out
 
VIII
 
Midnight empties the street
— — — To the left a boy
— One wing has been washed in rain
The other will never be clean any more —
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
To the right a haloed ascetic
Threading houses
Probes wounds for souls
— The poor can’t wash in hot water —
And I don’t know which turning to take —
 
IX
 
We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill’t on promiscuous lips
 
We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily-news
Printed in blood on its wings
  
X
 
In some
Prenatal plagiarism
Foetal buffoons
Caught tricks
— — — — —
From archetypal pantomime
Stringing emotions
Looped aloft
— — — —
For the blind eyes
That Nature knows us with
And most of Nature is green
— — — — — — — — — — — —
 
XI
 
Green things grow
Salads
For the cerebral
Forager’s revival
And flowered flummery
Upon bossed bellies
Of mountains
Rolling in the sun
 
XII
 
Shedding our petty pruderies
From slit eyes
 
We sidle up
To Nature
— — — that irate pornographist
 
XIII
 
The wind stuffs the scum of the white street
Into my lungs and my nostrils
Exhilarated birds
Prolonging flight into the night
Never reaching — — — — —— — —

 

The post Love Songs by Mina Loy (1915) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.