Celebrating Black History Month with Poets and Quietness
Georgia Douglas Johnson is on the cover of Crisis Magazine from Yale Beinecke Digital Files. Alice Dunbar Nelson’s Give Us Each Day, The Diary. Created by Angela using Canva.
I discovered Georgia Douglas Johnson in the diary excerpts of Alice Dunbar Nelson. In April of 1930, Alice and Georgia are together in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. On the return trip via train, Alice records in her diary that they arrived in PA at the “end of the Quaker meeting, and there were some minutes of peace and quiet—it was like a spiritual bath. Well, it was a quiet, lovely, and low-keyed day. We four, the Foggs, Georgia and I. Reading a quaint book of verses about dogs, talking around an open fire, eating dinner, and finally driving through a pelting cold rain to Wilmington.
I like this moment in Alice’s diary, how she embraced quiet moments, “enjoying her soul” and friends after a “spiritual bath.” A “spiritual bath” that allows one to give emotional space to become centered again.
Finding time to rest and relax the body, mind, and soul is healing for the heart. Often, finding time to “embrace quiet moments” is not easy when expectations loom over us, whether from others or ourselves.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne for Unsplash.
“How often do you sit in the quiet to refresh and rejuvenate? What does your space look like? Do you use a journal, notebook, or diary? How does writing in a diary rejuvenate you?”
A Time to Recover
I’m not one to get sick, but the end of January and the first few days of February slapped me with a cold that kept me medicated, binge-watching, and wrapped in the warmth of intercessory prayer. I cancelled all appointments and didn’t even try to hit the treadmill or an online exercise routine.
And that’s not the way I roll; I push through. On day six, when I began to feel the strength of my recovery without medication, I took the morning slow. I reread my diary and a few book pages with a hot cup of delish coffee. My husband and I started a paint-by-number project for the new year, so I sat at the dining room table and painted a few numbers while listening to Alice Coltrane. I enjoyed my soul.
Then I went to my office, set a timer, and put on my administrative assistant hat. I wanted to do more, which would make my recovery even slower. I enjoyed my breath. The recovery moments gave me emotional space to become centered again.
I imagine this was what it felt like for Alice that day on the train. Alice (1875-1935) and Georgia (1886-1966) were suffragists fighting for women's rights with their poetic verse, prosy newspaper columns, and spirituality. They traveled “in and through a world of political consciousness: injustices of power, privileges, realities or race, gender, and economics.” (Almost a hundred years later, some things haven’t changed.)
Nevertheless, we have to rest from the work. We have to take a spiritual bath, soaked in meditation, prayer, scriptures, and quietness.
Maintaining a work-rest rhythm for Alice because she was seeking a deeper spiritual awakening through quietness, “deep contemplation.” That’s what I took away from Alice's diary reflection.
Celebrating the poets
For Black History Month, I celebrate the work of the Atlanta-born Georgia Douglas Johnson, hostess of the literary salon, Halfway House, in Washington, DC., and New Orleans native Alice Dunbar Nelson, a diarist who maintained diaries from 1921 or earlier to 1931.
Here’s a poem Georgia Douglas Johnson published in 1918 in a collection titled The Heart of a Woman.
The Heart of a Woman
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
Johnson depicts "the heart of a woman" as a roaming figure, alien to its environment, which finds its place about the "turrets and vales" of life; disappointed with exploration, it returns to a reclusive existence ("enters some alien cage") and "breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars." The heart of a woman, therefore, is presented as a pathetic creature unable to secure for itself a place in the world; it is attracted to withdrawing from that harsh, unnurturing environment.
Diary Reflection
Have you ever felt this type of heartbreak, disappointed with exploration and unable to secure a place for yourself in the world? Have you withdrawn from the world to nurture yourself and your imagination? How else does this poem resonate with you?
Pen your thoughts in a diary, journal, or notebook. Hold them. Share them. Let your words refresh you.
Source: Modern American Poetry
