Poetry Wednesday: 07/29/09: Song

Song
By Gwendolyn Bennett

I am weaving a song of waters,
Shaken from firm, brown limbs,
Or heads thrown back in irreverent mirth.
My song has the lush sweetness
Of moist, dark lips
Where hymns keep company
With old forgotten banjo songs.
Abandon tells you
That I sing the heart of race
While sadness whispers
That I am the cry of a soul. . . .

A-shoutin’ in de ole camp-meeting-place,
A-strummin’ o’ de ole banjo.
Singin’ in de moonlight,
Sobbin’ in de dark.
Singin’, sobbin’, strummin’ slow . .
Singin’ slow, sobbin’ low.
Strummin’, strummin’, strummin’ slow . .
Words are bright bugles
That make the shining for my song,
And mothers hold down babies
To dark, warm breasts
To make my singing sad.

A dancing girl with swaying hips
Sets mad the queen in the harlot’s eye.
Praying slave
Jazz-band after
Breaking heart
To the time of laughter . . .
Clinking chains and minstrelsy
Are wedged fast with melody.
A praying slave
With a jazz-band after . . .
Singin’ slow, sobbin’ low.
Sun-baked lips will kiss the earth.
Throats of bronze will burst with mirth.
Sing a little faster,
Sing a little faster,
Sing!

1926

Hello, and welcome back to Poetry Wednesday. Use this sign in page for the weeks of 7/29/09 & 08/05/09 only.

This sign in page will be left open until 08/07/09 while I’m on vacation. You can sign in today and take the tour thru 08/07/09, so take your time.

I’ll be your hostess again during this time, but I will be on vacation. My sister, Sans Souci, has completed her poetry book, and is taking a break, but she will check in.

Before we get started, please make sure that your post has a link to get back to this page to make it easier to take the tour:

1) Copy and paste the following link that I have provided for you from this page to somewhere on your poetry post.

Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

2) Leave the link of your poetry post in the comments section below. This is the link guests will click on to read your poem.

Miss Gwendolyn Bennett, director of the Harlem Community Art Center of the N.Y.C. WPA Art Project, is shown beside an example of her work.

Poet, short-story writer, columnist, journalist, illustrator, graphic artist, arts educator, teacher and administrator on the New York City Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project (1935-1941). Gwendolyn Bennett was one of the most versatile figures to participate actively in both the 1920s Black American arts movement, which was designated the Harlem Renaissance, and in the 1930s arts alliance formed among African-American graphic artists that was called the Harlem Artists Guild. Although she never collected her published poetry into a volume nor produced a collection of short stories, Gwendolyn Bennett was recognized as a versatile artist and significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Torn between her ambition to work as a graphic artist and her desire to become a proficient writer using the medium of either poetry or prose, Bennett maintained the profile of an arts activist in New York City’s African American arts community for over twenty years. However, the five-year period spanning 1923 to 1928 proved to be the most productive for her as a creative writer. It was within this brief span that James Weldon Johnson recognized Bennett as a lyric poet of some power.

Born in Giddings, Texas, Bennett led a nomadic childhood before her father, Joshua Robbin Bennett, finally settled his family into comfortable surroundings in Brooklyn, New York. Bennett completed her secondary education at Girls’ High, where she had been active in both the literary society and the school’s art program. The first Negro to join the literary society, she participated in the drama society, and won first place in an art contest with a poster design.

Graduating in 1921, Bennett came of age just as the Harlem Renaissance was beginning to flower. Attempting to remain loyal to both of her dreams, Bennett began college classes at Columbia University in the Department of Fine Arts but she subsequently transferred to and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1924. While studying painting and graphic design at Pratt, Bennett also began seeking artistic outlets in the two major journals accepting work from African American artists–the NAACP’s the Crisis and the Urban League’s Opportunity.

Bennett’s banner years were 1923 to 1925. The Crisis carried a cover she illustrated and her poem “Heritage” was published by Opportunity in 1923. In 1924 her commemorative Poem “To Usward” was chosen as the dedication poem to honor the publication of a Jessie Redmon Fauset novel at the showcase Civic Club dinner for Harlem’s writers sponsored by Charles S. Johnson of the Urban League. Both “Heritage,” with its allusions to “lithe Negro girls” dancing around “heathen fires,” and “To Usward,” which celebrated the spirit of youth on the march, anticipated and invoked African and African American images, motifs, themes, or cultural icons that became central to much of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

Source: http://newdeal.feri.org/library/k87.htm
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Let’s start the tour !

Song By Gwendolyn Bennett

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Song
By Gwendolyn Bennett