Minor Notes, Volume 1

by Tracy K. Smith (Foreword), Joshua Bennett (Editor), Jesse McCarthy (Editor)

The first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. Smith.

A Penguin Classic

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous. The poets featured in Volume 1 are George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimké.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, African American, Classics

201 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 11, 2023

About the author

Tracy K. Smith is the author of Wade in the Water; Life on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award; and The Body’s Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is also the editor of an anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, and the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, Smith served as Poet Laureate of the United States. She teaches at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Each blow for freedom struck is freedom's gain." -Fenton Johnson, "Ethiopia", Visions of the Dusk (1915) (Poem featured in this collection)

I'm so glad this collection was put together. It contains poems from seven understudied Black poets from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. I definitely found some new favorite poems and poets from this book. If you enjoy poetry then this book is for you. I can't wait to see who will be featured in Volume 2.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his poem “After Avery R. Young,” Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Jericho Brown writes, The blk mind is a continuous mind. This line emerges for me as a guiding principle—as a mantra, even—when I consider the work of Black poetry in America, which insists upon the centrality of Black lives to the human story, and offers the terms of memory, music, conscience, and imagination that serve to counteract the many erasures and distortions riddling the prevailing narrative of Black life in this country. Indeed, Black poets help us to consider our past, present, and future not as disparate fragments on a disappearing trail, but rather as a single, emphatic unity: the Was, Is, and Ever-Shall-Be of Black presence and consciousness. tracy k. smith

Sonnet to Those Who See But Darkly by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922)

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.

Beautiful, important collection that is the start of a series of books celebrating and amplifying Black poetry that has been erased or minimized, and the talent and heart and joy and sorrow are all here, all to read and learn from.


The Heart Of A Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922)

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

Aspiration BY Henrietta Cordelia Ray

We climb the slopes of life with throbbing heart,
And eager pulse, like children toward a star.
Sweet siren music cometh from afar,
To lure us on meanwhile. Responsive start
The nightingales to richer song than Art
Can ever teach. No passing shadows mar
Awhile the dewy skies; no inner jar
Of conflict bids us with our quest to part.
We see adown the distance, rainbow-arched,
What melting aisles of liquid light and bloom!
We hasten, tremulous, with lips all parched,
And eyes wide-stretched, nor dream of coming gloom.
Enough that something held almost divine
Within us ever stirs. Can we repine?

Limitations By Henrietta Cordelia Ray

The subtlest strain a great musician weaves,
Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony
To music in his soul. May it not be
Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves
That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves
Unheard in the transition. Thus do we
Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty
Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives
A vision exquisite. Yet who can match
The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing
The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine?
We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch
Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring
Glimpses ineffable of things divine.

Excerpts:

Praise Of Creation by George Moses Horton

Now let my muse descend,
To view the march below--
Ye subterraneous worlds attend
And bid your chorus flow.

Ye vast volcanoes yell,
Whence fiery cliffs are hurled;
And all ye liquid oceans swell
Beneath the solid world.

Ye cataracts combine,
Nor let the pæan cease--
The universal concert join,
Thou dismal precipice.

But halt my feeble tongue,
My weary muse delays:
But, oh my soul, still float along
Upon the flood of praise!

On Spring by George Moses Horton
Hail, thou auspicious vernal dawn!
Ye birds, proclaim the winter's gone,
Ye warbling minstrels sing;
Pour forth your tribute as ye rise,
And thus salute the fragrant skies
The pleasing smiles of Spring.
…
Inspiring month of youthful Love,
How oft we in the peaceful grove,
Survey the flowery plume;
Or sit beneath the sylvan shade,
Where branches wave above the head,
And smile on every bloom.

Exalted month, when thou art gone,
May Virtue then begin the dawn
Of an eternal Spring?
May raptures kindle on my tongue,
And start a new, eternal song,
Which ne'er shall cease to ring!

On The Poetic Muse by George Moses Horton

Far, far above this world I soar,
And almost nature lose,
Aerial regions to explore,
With this ambitious Muse.


My towering thoughts with pinions rise,
Upon the gales of song,
Which waft me through the mental skies,
With music on my tongue.
…
Such is the quiet bliss of soul,
When in some calm retreat,
Where pensive thoughts like streamlets roll,
And render silence sweet;


And when the vain tumultuous crowd
Shakes comfort from my mind,
My muse ascends above the cloud
And leaves the noise behind.


With vivid flight she mounts on high
Above the dusky maze,
And with a perspicacious eye
Doth far 'bove nature gaze.

Declaration
by Fenton Johnson

I love the world and all therein:
The panting, darkened souls who seek
A brighter light, a sweeter hope,
From those who drink the bubbling wine
And eat the flesh of tender fowl;
I love the pampered son of wealth,
And pour on him my pity's oil,
This world our God hath made for all, —
The East, the West, the black, the white,
The rich, the poor, the wise, the dumb, —
And even beasts may share the fruit;
No prison wall, but sunlight's glow,
No rods of steel, but arms of love,
For all that creep and walk and strive
And wear upon their countenance
Creation's mark, the kiss of God.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tend to reserve five-star ratings for books that knock my socks off.

And I had intended to give this book four stars for an introduction to the lives and significant poems of "these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

But then Anne Spencer invited me into a garden with her verse and she touched something deep within. I was enchanted and wanted to know more about this lyrical poetess who was unknown to me until I picked up this book.

There is more to this collection than she. But she, with her words, lifts us, well, at least this reader, off the page and into an enchanted place with her poems.

[Tatyana Vogt · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Okay I want to give this a higher rating because of what the book is AND the fact that I did find some new favorite poems and some poets to read more from. I'm so happy to have an anthology of historical black poets since we're often forgotten.

But sadly I didn't connect with a lot of the poems overall even though I am grateful for the collection for the few poems that I loved. I hope we get more volumes in the near future!

[vio · Rating 2 out of 5]

short and sweet

cool but not depth

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of my era of finding poetry audiobooks on Libby to listen to before sleep.

[Rj Dion · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a beautiful way to discover outstanding poets while seeing every perspective of American life. I can't recommend more than its a must-read!

[McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listening to the audiobook of this was a really nice experience!

I don't think there was a lot of substantial writing in this, but it was an enjoyable experience over that.

[Malcolm Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most beautiful poetry I've read.

[Mese E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is power in words, the greatest of which is remembering what was long forgotten and misplaced.