A GREAT POET WAS BORN ON THIS DAY, GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON

"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."
--Georgia Douglas Johnson

Listen up. September 10 is the date that poet and producer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Daughter of a wealthy Englishman, Johnson was born in Marietta, GA. She attended Atlanta University, studied music at Oberlin college in Ohio.

In 1903, Douglas, her husband-- Henry Johnson-- and two sons moved to Washington D.C. where her home became the site of a weekly gathering of young black writers and artists. It became known as the "S Street Salon," a place for writers came to showcase their new work. These young and ambitious authors included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, MaryP. Burrill, and Angelina Weld Grimke among others.

Despite working full time, Johnson remained involved with produced literary works, maintained a column for more than 20 weekly newspapers, edited books, wrote 40 plays and more than 39 songs. And she continued to write very good poetry. As a writer, she was perhaps best know for her poem, "I Want to Die While You Love Me," which was read at her funeral. She died in May of 1966.
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I want to die while you love me

I want to die while you love me,

While yet you hold me fair,

While laughter lies upon my lips

And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me,

And bear to that still bed

Your kisses turbulent, unspent,

To warm me when I'm dead.

I want to die while you love me

Oh, who would care to live

Till love has nothing more to ask

And nothing more to give!

I want to die while you love me

And never, never see

The glory of this perfect day

Grow dim or cease to be.

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Reference:

The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford University Press Copyright © 1997