Maggie Pogue Johnson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1883 Fincastle, Virginia |
| Died | 1956 Clifton Forge, Virginia |
| Alma mater | Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute |
| Occupation(s) | Poet and Composer |
Maggie Pogue Johnson (1883-1956) was a twentieth century Black American composer and poet. Johnson wrote verse in both standard English as well as in the dialect and speech patterns of Black Americans at the time, [1] which still retained the influence of their speech from when they were enslaved. [2]
Johnson was born in Fincastle, Virginia, and educated in the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg, Virginia. [3] Her parents, Lucie Jane Banister Pogue and Rev. Samuel Pogue made sure their children were well-educated. This was important, considering the fields that she and her siblings ended up in, such as teaching, physics, pharmacy, and ministerial work. [4] Johnson taught for two years and was also the president of the Literary and Debating Society in Covington, Virginia. [5] She was the composer of "I Know That I Love You" and other songs, as well as the author of Virginia Dreams. [3] Her poem The Story of Lovers Leap was inspired by a famous resorts in the South, Greenbrier White Sulpher Springs in West Virginia. [6] Johnson's early poetry was part of a larger movement by Black women poets to create a model of womanhood that was an alternative to the dominant model of "True Womanhood" as a white, middle-class experience. [7] Examples of her alternative model of womanhood can be seen in Old Maid's Soliloquy [6] and Meal Time [6] from Virginia Dreams. Her poem Poet of Our Race [6] is dedicated to the late poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
She married Doctor Walter W. Johnson of Staunton, Virginia in 1904, with whom she had one child - Walter W. Jr., [3] and Dr. J.W. Shellcroft of West Virginia in 1938. [8]
Johnson aimed at confronting gender restrictions in her work despite its critical consequences on black female writers. Dialect poetry was mainly a male-attributed art and her use of it endangered her femininity, since black women were already thought to be uneducated and less feminine. Therefore the use of a language that did not abide by white standardized eloquence and correctness was considered risky and threatening. [11] Johnson emphasizes this in her alternation between standard and dialect language in many of her poems. Doing so, she showcases how conditional it was for women of color to learn and use conventional language in order to be accepted in society. [12] Moreover, in much of her poetry, both her male and female subjects serve as exemplars of educational development and moral strength, and as such support the idea of racial uplift. [13]
Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Helen Johnson was an African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. She is remembered today for her poetry that captures both the challenges and the excitement of this era during her short-lived career.
Mari Evans was an African-American poet, writer, and dramatist associated with the Black Arts Movement. Evans received grants and awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation. Her poetry is known for its lyrical simplicity and the directness of its themes. She also wrote nonfiction and edited Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, an important and timely critical anthology devoted to the work of 15 writers. Evans died at the age of 97 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Naomi Long Madgett was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.
James Edwin Campbell was an American educator, school administrator, newspaper editor, poet, and essayist. Campbell was the first principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute from 1892 until 1894, and is considered by the university as its first president.
Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
Anne Bethel Spencer was an American poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, and gardener. She was a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, despite living in Virginia for most of her life, far from the center of the movement in New York. She met Edward Spencer while attending Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. Following their marriage in 1901, the couple moved into a house he built at 1313 Pierce Street, where they raised a family and lived for the remainder of their lives.
Alice Dunbar Nelson was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation of African Americans born free in the Southern United States after the end of the American Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. After his death, she married physician Henry Arthur Callis and later was married to Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist. She achieved prominence as a poet, author of short stories and dramas, newspaper columnist, women's rights activist, and editor of two anthologies.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator. One of the world's best-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a 2004 Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Fenton Johnson was an American poet, essayist, author of short stories, editor, and educator. Johnson came from a middle-class African-American family in Chicago, where he spent most of his career. His work is often included in anthologies of 20th-century poetry, and he is noted for early prose poetry. Author James Weldon Johnson called Fenton, "one of the first Negro revolutionary poets”. He is also considered a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance.
Maggie Smith is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor who lives in Bexley, Ohio. Her 2016 poem "Good Bones" went viral and her 2023 memoir was a New York Times best-seller.
Ajuan Maria Mance is an American visual artist, author, editor, and a professor of Ethnic Studies and English at Mills College in Oakland, California. She created the portrait series 1001 Black Men.
Feminist poetry is inspired by, promotes, or elaborates on feminist principles and ideas. It might be written with the conscious aim of expressing feminist principles, although sometimes it is identified as feminist by critics in a later era. Some writers are thought to express feminist ideas even if the writer was not an active member of the political movement during their era. Many feminist movements, however, have embraced poetry as a vehicle for communicating with public audiences through anthologies, poetry collections, and public readings.
Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis (1814–1884) was an American poet and abolitionist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She co-founded The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and contributed many poems to the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator.
Nadia Nurhussein is an American academic and author specialized in African-American literature, culture, and poetics. She is an associate professor of English and Africana studies at the Johns Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Clara Ann Thompson (1869–1949) was an African-American poet, teacher and civil rights advocate. Thompson was born in Rossmoyne, Ohio. Thompson's parents, John Henry and Clara Jane Gray Thompson, were previously enslaved in Virginia.
"Mother to Son" is a 1922 poem by American writer and activist Langston Hughes. The poem follows a mother speaking to her son about her life, which she says "ain't been no crystal stair". She first describes the struggles she has faced and then urges him to continue moving forward. It was referenced by Martin Luther King Jr. several times in his speeches during the civil rights movement, and has been analyzed by several critics, notably for its style and representation of the mother.
"We Wear the Mask" is an 1895 poem in the rondeau form by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It is generally considered one of his most famous works and has been cited by several scholars as his best poem. The poem appeared in Dunbar's second volume of poetry.
Priscilla Jane Thompson (1871–1942), was an American poet and public reader. She has been widely anthologized as an example of early female African-American poetry.
Yet, by drawing her vernacular vignettes from the lives of post-bellum– pre-Harlem African Americans whose attitudes and speech patterns were close to their slave roots...
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