This Waiting for Love: Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance

by Verner D. Mitchell (Editor)

This volume brings together all of the known poetry and a selection of correspondence by an enormously talented but underappreciated poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Cousin of novelist Dorothy West and friend of Zora Neale Hurston, Helene Johnson (1905–1995) first gained literary prominence when James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost selected three of her poems for prizes in a 1926 competition. During the late 1920s and early 1930s her poetry appeared in various small magazines, such as the Saturday Evening Quill, Palms, Opportunity , and Harlem . In 1933 Johnson married, and two years later her last published poem, "Let Me Sing My Song," appeared in Challenge , the journal West had founded to revive the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance.

In his well-researched introduction, Verner D. Mitchell reconstructs Johnson's life, the details of which have long been veiled from public view, and places her in the context of a vital literary tradition. In addition to discussing her relationship with West, Hurston, and other black women writers, he explores the distinctive, at times radical, qualities of her work. Ever willing to defy the genteel conventions that governed women's writing, Johnson wrote poems on erotic themes and engaged the aesthetic, gender, and racial politics of her time.

Cheryl A. Wall's foreword also celebrates Johnson's talent, particularly the ease with which she moved among various verse forms―from the rigor of the sonnet to the improvisational creativity of free black vernacular. "An unexpected and most welcome gift," This Waiting for Love , Wall writes, is "an enduring tribute" to "the vibrant poetry of Helene Johnson."

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

Reviews

[Wyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no reason why your hands should clutch
At pretty yesterdays. There is not much
Of beauty in me now. And though my breath
Is quick, my body sentient, my heart
Attuned to romance as before, you must
Not, through mistaken chivalry, pretend
To love me still. There is no mortal art
Can overcome Time's deep, corroding rust.
Let Love's beginning expiate Love's end.
(From "Remember Not")

Picked this up on a whim at the library having never heard of Helene Johnson. It seems she was a pretty important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, whose poems have, unfortunately, mostly been lost to time, as most or all of the journals she published in have long since died away. This collection includes many of her published poems as well as a few of her unpublished ones. The latter are undated, but the former are dated from 1925 to 1935.

A lot of the poems here uniquely focus on the Black experience, and several of these feature renditions of Black dialect which I feel were pretty ahead of their time ("But he'd be sendin' back fo' dem soon//And den dey'd all come no'th and live in a big house"). The eroticism of some of these poems also struck me as startlingly progressive--perhaps even radical--for the period.

There's some beautiful, affecting poetry in here, and I'd highly recommend that any poetry lovers check out this collection. To demonstrate some of the best of Johnson's writing, I'll close with a snippet from "Let Me Sing my Song":


Love flowing east,
Love flowing west--
The level land;
The mountain's breasts;
Let me sing my song,
Let me speak my piece.
Let the little soul of me find release
In the tree's roots,
The flower's breath.--
I fear the barren drought of death.

[Kanye Waldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic sample and sneak peek into the life of a gifted writer of the Harlem Renaissance. It is absolutely criminal that Helene Johnson is not widely read and taught in all levels of poetry and education. She was phenomenal!

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting poet, definitely should be more well known