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Complete Poems
2000 marks the centenary of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," James Weldon Johnson's most famous lyric, which is now embraced as the Negro National Anthem. In celebration, this Penguin original collects all the poems from Johnson's published works— Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), God's Trombones (1927), and Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day (1935)—along with a number of previously unpublished poems. Sondra Kathryn Wilson, the foremost authority on Johnson and his work, provides an introduction that sheds light on Johnson's many achievements and his pioneering contributions to recording and celebrating the African American experience.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
202 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2000
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About the author
James Weldon Johnson
142 books132 followersJames Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the first African-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 18, 2023
Some good ones in here;
from: "Listen, Lord-A Prayer"
When I start down the steep and slippery steps of death—
When this old world begins to rock beneath my feet—
Lower me to my dusty grave in peace
To wait for that great gittin’ up morning—
Amen.
To a Friend
Many sad hearts may you lighten,
And turn sorrow oft to bliss;
Many dark lives may you brighten,
If you’ll make your motto this:
“Ever lend a helping hand.”
from: "Listen, Lord-A Prayer"
When I start down the steep and slippery steps of death—
When this old world begins to rock beneath my feet—
Lower me to my dusty grave in peace
To wait for that great gittin’ up morning—
Amen.
To a Friend
Many sad hearts may you lighten,
And turn sorrow oft to bliss;
Many dark lives may you brighten,
If you’ll make your motto this:
“Ever lend a helping hand.”
October 18, 2017
I bought this collection mainly because I wanted to be able to read Johnson’s GOD’S TROMBONES: SEVEN NEGRO SERMONS IN VERSE whenever I wished. I remember well when I was in Junior High that my music teacher was going to teach the choir a number we were going to be singing about the creation. And she began class that day by reading the poem THE CREATION aloud. There wasn’t a sound as she read it. I thought about it off and on the rest of the day. It would be some years before I heard it again – and once again it was being read aloud and I failed to write down the author’s name or the poem name.
More years passed. Some fellow teachers and I attended a seminar being held by the author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear – Bill Martin, Jr. He began that first day by stepping to the microphone and reading aloud GO DOWN DEATH and all the emotion I had felt from hearing THE CREATION rose within me. But this time I did write down the author’s name and the name of the poem. And lo and behold, it was the same poet! At that point, I did check out a library book that had GO DOWN DEATH and typed for myself a copy of the poem.
Off and on in my life I have encountered these two poems again and again. Just not often enough. Johnson is a complex poet and writes love poetry, philosophical poetry, dialectical poetry. He writes words of agony and despair but also joy and humor. His poems vary so much in tone and content – Sunset in the Tropics, Deep in the Quiet Wood, “Lazy”, Moods, and his most famous, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
More years passed. Some fellow teachers and I attended a seminar being held by the author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear – Bill Martin, Jr. He began that first day by stepping to the microphone and reading aloud GO DOWN DEATH and all the emotion I had felt from hearing THE CREATION rose within me. But this time I did write down the author’s name and the name of the poem. And lo and behold, it was the same poet! At that point, I did check out a library book that had GO DOWN DEATH and typed for myself a copy of the poem.
Off and on in my life I have encountered these two poems again and again. Just not often enough. Johnson is a complex poet and writes love poetry, philosophical poetry, dialectical poetry. He writes words of agony and despair but also joy and humor. His poems vary so much in tone and content – Sunset in the Tropics, Deep in the Quiet Wood, “Lazy”, Moods, and his most famous, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
May 5, 2021
Weldon’s Muse “put his eye to the telescope of eternity”. . . “and set his tongue on fire” (“Listen, O Lord—A Prayer”). So deserving of at least one of the Pulitzer Prizes his contemporary E. A. Robinson won for far inferior work, Johnson’s masterful poetry still stands the test of time. His poetry of protest, challenge, and hope is perhaps even more salient now in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement. As leader of the NAACP and the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s, Johnson was a mover and shaker at the epicenter of black thought and action, giving voice to the movement for racial justice and shaping the narrative arc of American literature with his own monumental literary contributions, for which he deserved at least one Nobel Prize nomination as well. Johnson distinguished himself as an extraordinary cultural force in American life and letters during his lifetime; he was also one of the exceptional international figures of the twentieth century. Only racism can explain why he was not recognized as such by the Pulitzer judges and Nobel committee.
Favorite poems:
“Listen, O Lord—A Prayer”
“The Creation”
“O Black and Unknown Bards”
“Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day”
“Brothers—American Drama”
“Mother Night”
“The Black Mammy”
“Vashti”
“If I Were Paris”
“Ghosts of the Old Year”
“A Poet to His Baby Son”
“A Plantation Bacchanal”
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
“Lazy”
“A Dream”
“Class Poem”
Favorite poems:
“Listen, O Lord—A Prayer”
“The Creation”
“O Black and Unknown Bards”
“Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day”
“Brothers—American Drama”
“Mother Night”
“The Black Mammy”
“Vashti”
“If I Were Paris”
“Ghosts of the Old Year”
“A Poet to His Baby Son”
“A Plantation Bacchanal”
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
“Lazy”
“A Dream”
“Class Poem”
July 6, 2025
More rethought sermons and epic ballads than what readers would call traditional poetry, or portrait--there is power in author James Weldon Johnson's verses; it's just that in their epic retellings, he often neglects the quaint and abrieved.
Yes, the plight of the negro in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States of America was epic in scale--a dismantling of white patriarchal structures that few thought would ever begin to crumble. It's a plight with a long history, intertwining religious attitudes and political thoughts, and was not without its own sufferings. In this plight, much of Johnson's poems carry weight and narrative; this much is true. But when it comes to brevity and succinction of thought, Johnson hardly seems to care.
Ballads have their own tradition in poetic literature, and this book no doubt belongs there as well. But sometimes I want a smaller poet, someone who finds profunditity in the smallness of an observation. Johnson doesn't need my stamp of approval, and his powerful work isn't going to be forgotten anytime soon. I just miss the poems of Dickinson and Shakespeare, in the metaphysics of Donne and the style of Yeats. I miss the poets, not the preachers....
Yes, the plight of the negro in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States of America was epic in scale--a dismantling of white patriarchal structures that few thought would ever begin to crumble. It's a plight with a long history, intertwining religious attitudes and political thoughts, and was not without its own sufferings. In this plight, much of Johnson's poems carry weight and narrative; this much is true. But when it comes to brevity and succinction of thought, Johnson hardly seems to care.
Ballads have their own tradition in poetic literature, and this book no doubt belongs there as well. But sometimes I want a smaller poet, someone who finds profunditity in the smallness of an observation. Johnson doesn't need my stamp of approval, and his powerful work isn't going to be forgotten anytime soon. I just miss the poems of Dickinson and Shakespeare, in the metaphysics of Donne and the style of Yeats. I miss the poets, not the preachers....
March 16, 2025
A while back, I read "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson, and I really enjoyed it. I then read "God's Trombone," a book of poetry (which is also collected here). I've been holding off on reading this one, but I finally got around to it now. It's pretty good, like any poetry collection it's going to be hit and miss depending on your preferences and I did find myself skipping some of the poems (the "God's Trombone" section because I'd already read them, others because I'd either encountered them before or just wasn't as engaged), but the really great poems here are worth the price of admission. Another great collection of writing from a Black poet that I was unaware of maybe ten years ago, but whose work I have become more familiar with over time.
May 14, 2019
This was an enjoyable selection that emotionally carriers the reader through social commentary circling mostly around the themes of slavery and African American life. The religious elements woven into the works and described in the Seven Negro Sermons were insightful into the perspective of Christianity of the African community in America. I related most with the works written in his college years, but it is no wonder his talent for poetry has made him one of the most influential African American poets today.
August 20, 2009
Johnson (1871-1938) is a major figure of 20th century American culture and politics—lawyer, teacher, journalist, songwriter, diplomat, novelist, civil rights leader, scholar, critic, poet, and pioneer. He was the first African-American to pass the bar in Florida. The first to open a public high school for African Americans in Florida. He was, as one of the leading songwriters of the early 20th century, a founding member of ASCAP. He was the first African American director of the NAACP. He was among the first, if not the first, to write about and collect and publish a comprehensive anthology of African-American spirituals, correctly pointing out their significance and linking their influence to American popular music, including the newest form, jazz. As a poet his collection God’s Trombones is not only wonderful but seminal, a masterpiece. Much of the rest of his complete poems, however, are a far more mixed bag of lyrics, experiments, sentimental verse, occasional poems, with a handful of stronger works of originality. He wrote both in formal, classical diction and in dialect, succeeding and failing in both forms. Among the lyrics are “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” and a poem called “We to America,” which anticipates Langston Hughes: “How would you have us, as we are— / Or sinking ‘neath the load we bear? / Our eyes fixed forward on a star? / Or gazing empty at despair? // Rising or falling? Men or things? / With dragging pace or footsteps fleet? / Strong, willing sinews in your wings? / Or tightening chains about your feet?” The topics are race, justice, love, time, fame, art, nature, mythology, folklore, and even the environment: “The river hissed and frothed / In piteous indignation. / I thought: Why this hissing and frothing, / Do you not know / That the ultimate end of all beautiful rivers / Is to carry sewage to the sea?” Johnson is not always successful but he’s always interesting, following his curiosity, his interest in language and form, and his faith in words to capture feelings.
January 12, 2012
I love the variety of poems in this volume. My favorites are the sermon poems, but I also love the light-hearted ones, as well.
August 31, 2016
A fine introduction to the importance of James Weldon Johnson's work to American poetry.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews