Black Narratives

James Weldon Johnson

• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781513295596
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) is a collection of poems by James Weldon Johnson. Although less popular than his book God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927), Johnson's second poetry collection showcases his talents as a rising star of African American literature. Including some poems that would be featured in The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), an influential anthology compiled and edited by the poet himself, Fifty Years and Other Poems remains essential to Johnson's legacy as a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. "Fifty Years" opens the collection with an ode to emancipation, a starting point from which millions of men, women, and children were given the opportunity, however fragile it was, to pursue better lives. Rather than give thanks for freedom granted, however, Johnson implores his fellow Black Americans to remain proud, assured that liberty is their hard-earned right: "This land is ours by right of birth, / This land is ours by right of toil; / We helped to turn its virgin earth, / Our sweat is in its fruitful soil." Hopeful and resilient, Johnson reflects on his own place in this history of struggle, paying particular heed to his status as a poet, his ability to sing despite centuries of violent oppression. In his poem "O Black and Unknown Bards, " he asks "O black and unknown bards of long ago, / How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?" Recognizing the need for a reconciliation between the long tradition of black culture and the overwhelming erasure of his own contemporary artists, Johnson highlights the efforts of those poets such as himself, who "Within [their] dark-kept soul[s], burst into song." >This edition of James Weldon Johnson's Fifty Years and Other Poems is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Fifty Years
• To America
• O Black and Unknown Bards
• O Southland!
• To Horace Bumstead
• The Color Sergeant
• The Black Mammy
• Father, Father Abraham
• Brothers
• Fragment
• The White Witch
• Mother Night
• The Young Warrior
• The Glory of the Day was in Her Face
• Sonnet
• From the Spanish
• From the German of Uhland
• Before a Painting
• I Hear the Stars Still Singing
• Girl of Fifteen
• The Suicide
• Down by the Carib Sea
• And the Greatest of these is War
• A Mid-Day Dreamer
• The Temptress
• Ghosts of the Old Year
• The Ghost of Deacon Brown
• “Lazy”
• Omar
• Deep in the Quiet Wood
• Voluptas
• The Word of an Engineer
• Life
• Sleep
• Prayer at Sunrise
• The Gift to Sing
• Morning, Noon and Night
• Her Eyes Twin Pools
• The Awakening
• Beauty that is Never Old
• Venus in a Garden
• Vashti
• The Reward
• Jingles & Croons
• A Note About the Author
• A Note from the Publisher