George Bornstein, arguing that a simple reading is not necessarily the best strategy, provides an alternative to the traditional way we think about reading a page. Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poems in the October 1917 issue of The Crisis seem conventional but when read with attention to context-images, articles, fonts, and verbal patterns-they become rather revelatory of a modernity inflected by racial terror, gender constraints, and class imperatives. But if you’ve ever read articles in The New Yorker and been struck by the sudden placement of cartoons or if you’ve ever mistaken a camera advertisement for photojournalism in National Geographic you may have realized that reading is more than just looking at words. Perhaps a picture on the opposite page catches your eye, but it seems marginal, separate, irrelevant. Revised edition: Previously published as The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems, Bronze: A Book of Verse, A Sonnet in Memory of John Brown, and Afterglow, this edition of Collected Early Poems (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.How do you read a page? You look at the words, from left to right, top to bottom.
One of the most remarkable American poets of her era, Johnson - through her art - gives readers a lyrical and moving account of what it was like to be a woman of her time. Two additional poems, from magazines of the Harlem Renaissance, show her in a meditative mood, reflecting on love, loss, and the legacy of John Brown. The poems collected in Bronze, on the other hand, display Johnson as more politically engaged, exploring matters of racial justice and dissecting the particular challenges facing a mother of color. These are poems about love and disillusionment, empowerment and fulfillment, loneliness and joy. In The Heart of a Woman, Johnson’s exquisite verse captures the full emotional terrain of womanhood.
Her poetry, however, is what first brought her to national attention, and in the early works collected here, her wide-ranging talents are already quite evident.
Georgia Douglas Johnson was a key contributor to the Harlem Renaissance - hosting an influential salon, breaking new ground as a Black playwright, and playing an important role as an anti-lynching activist.
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