GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT
Reading edition
Gwendolyn B. Bennett was born in Giddings, Texas, on July 8th, 1902. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was a school teacher. She received her elementary training in the Public Schools of Washington, D. C., and Harrisburg, Pa. She was graduated from the Girls’ High School in Brooklyn, New York, during January, 1921. While she was in attendance there she was a member of the Felter Literary Society and the Girls’ High School Dramatic Society, being the first Negro girl to have been elected to either of these societies. In an open contest she was awarded the first prize for a poster bearing the slogan Fresh Air Prevents Tuberculosis.
She matriculated in the Fine Arts Department of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, where she remained for two years. She then entered the Normal Art Course at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She was the author of her class play each of the two years she was there. In her Junior Year she played the leading part in the play which she had herself written. She was graduated from Pratt Institute June 1924.
She then became a member of the Howard University Faculty in Fine Arts as Instructor in Design, Water-color and Crafts. During the Christmas holidays of the school year 1924-25 Miss Bennett was awarded the Thousand Dollar Foreign Scholarship by the Alpha Sigma Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at its Annual Convention held in New York City.
She sailed for Cherbourg, France on June fifteenth, 1925. While in Paris she studied at the Académie Julian, The Académie Coloraossi and the École de Pantheon. Through the influence of Konrad Bercovici she was thrown in contact with the artist, Frans Masereel, one of France’s best known modern painters. M. and Mme. Masereel offered Miss Bennett the hospitality of their home and together with their circle of friends did much to encourage her in her work while in Paris. She returned to America during June 1926.
For the summer of 1926 she was employed at the Opportunity magazine where she acted in the capacity of Assistant to the Editor. September 1926 she returned to Howard University where she resumed her classroom work after a year’s leave of absence.
QUATRAINS
1
Brushes and paints are all I have To speak the music in my soul— While silently there laughs at me A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.
2
How strange that grass should sing— Grass is so still a thing.... And strange the swift surprise of snow So soft it falls and slow.
SECRET
I shall make a song like your hair ... Gold-woven with shadows green-tinged, And I shall play with my song As my fingers might play with your hair. Deep in my heart I shall play with my song of you, Gently.... I shall laugh At its sensitive lustre ... I shall wrap my song in a blanket, Blue like your eyes are blue With tiny shots of silver. I shall wrap it caressingly, Tenderly.... I shall sing a lullaby To the song I have made Of your hair and eyes ... And you will never know That deep in my heart I shelter a song of you Secretly....
ADVICE
You were a sophist, Pale and quite remote, As you bade me Write poems— Brown poems Of dark words And prehistoric rhythms ... Your pallor stifled my poesy But I remembered a tapestry That I would some day weave Of dim purples and fine reds And blues Like night and death— The keen precision of your words Wove a silver thread Through the dusk softness Of my dream-stuff....
TO A DARK GIRL
I love you for your brownness And the rounded darkness of your breast. I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice And shadows where your wayward eye-lids rest. Something of old forgotten queens Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk And something of the shackled slave Sobs in the rhythm of your talk. Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate, Keep all you have of queenliness, Forgetting that you once were slave, And let your full lips laugh at Fate!
YOUR SONGS
When first you sang a song to me With laughter shining from your eyes, You trolled your music liltingly With cadences of glad surprise. In after years I heard you croon In measures delicately slow Of trees turned silver by the moon And nocturnes sprites and lovers know. And now I cannot hear you sing, But love still holds your melody For silence is a sounding thing To one who listens hungrily.
FANTASY
I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night Where you were the dusk-eyed queen, And there in the pallor of moon-veiled light The loveliest things were seen ... A slim-necked peacock sauntered there In a garden of lavender hues, And you were strange with your purple hair As you sat in your amethyst chair With your feet in your hyacinth shoes. Oh, the moon gave a bluish light Through the trees in the land of dreams and night. I stood behind a bush of yellow-green And whistled a song to the dark-haired queen ...
LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF ALEXANDER DUMAS
Cemeteries are places for departed souls And bones interred, Or hearts with shattered loves. A woman with lips made warm for laughter Would find grey stones and roving spirits Too chill for living, moving pulses ... And thou, great spirit, wouldst shiver in thy granite shroud Should idle mirth or empty talk Disturb thy tranquil sleeping. A cemetery is a place for shattered loves And broken hearts.... Bowed before the crystal chalice of thy soul, I find the multi-colored fragrance of thy mind Has lost itself in Death’s transparency. Oh, stir the lucid waters of thy sleep And coin for me a tale Of happy loves and gems and joyous limbs And hearts where love is sweet! A cemetery is a place for broken hearts And silent thought ... And silence never moves, Nor speaks nor sings.
HATRED
I shall hate you Like a dart of singing steel Shot through still air At even-tide. Or solemnly As pines are sober When they stand etched Against the sky. Hating you shall be a game Played with cool hands And slim fingers. Your heart will yearn For the lonely splendor Of the pine tree; While rekindled fires In my eyes Shall wound you like swift arrows. Memory will lay its hands Upon your breast And you will understand My hatred.
SONNET
1
He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black— A lover come from legends long ago—With silver spurs and silken plumes a-blow, And flashing sword caught fast and buckled back In a carven sheath of Tamarack. He came with footsteps beautifully slow, And spoke in voice meticulously low. He came and Romance followed in his track.... I did not ask his name—I thought him Love; I did not care to see his hidden face. All life seemed born in my intaken breath; All thought seemed flown like some forgotten dove. He bent to kiss and raised his visor’s lace ... All eager-lipped I kissed the mouth of Death.
SONNET
2
Some things are very dear to me— Such things as flowers bathed by rain Or patterns traced upon the sea Or crocuses where snow has lain ... The iridescence of a gem, The moon’s cool opalescent light, Azaleas and the scent of them, And honeysuckles in the night. And many sounds are also dear— Like winds that sing among the trees Or crickets calling from the weir Or Negroes humming melodies. But dearer far than all surmise Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes.