Helene Johnson (July 7, 1906 – July 7, 1995) 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.

Background

Helen (Helene) Johnson was born on July 7, 1906, to Ella Benson and George William Johnson in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1]

Her mother, Ella Benson, is categorized as a domestic worker. Her father, George William, left soon after her birth and there is minimal information about him. She was raised by her mother and her grandfather, Benjamin Benson. Her mother was the child of former slaves. When growing up, Johnson was raised in a town near Boston that was named Brookline.

Johnson was named after her maternal grandmother, Helen Pease Benson, who, along with her maternal grandfather, Benjamin Benson, was born into slavery in Camden, South Carolina. The pair produced three daughters together, Ella (Helene's mother), Minnie, and Rachel.

During her formidable years, Johnson lived with her two aunts, Minnie and Rachel, who gave her the nickname Helene, even though her birth name was Helen. Johnson was raised with her cousin and future Harlem Renaissance novelist writer, Dorothy West, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Dorothy West was also known for writing short stories. The two spent summers together in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts.

Helene received her high school education at the Boston Girls' Latin School, which was considered an exceptional public school for adolescents to attend at the time.

After high school, Johnson attended both Boston University and Columbia University but did not successfully graduate from either.

After the year 1929, Johnson left New York, New York, and returned to Boston. In 1933, Johnson married William Warner Hubbell III. Together, they had one child, whom they named Abigail. Years after the birth of her child, it is understood that Helene and her husband William divorced. Although it is known that a divorce occurred from sources close to the pair, there is no legal documentation of this occurring. Helene never remarried.

After her move to Boston where these family issues occurred, she did not publish any more poetry.^[2] Helene made this decision regardless of her previous awards and recognition and decided to stop writing for the public completely. Many of Johnson's readers were confused by her disappearance, but Johnson never explained the reason she made this decision.

Although she was well known for the poetry that she and already produced, she left Boston and resettled down in Manhattan, in New York City, New York, and worked jobs that were unrelated to poetry. Along with ending her formal career in poetry, she also began staying away from all media,^[1] even if it was praise. She made sure to stay away from cameras and curious media outlets. However, even out of the eye of the public, Johnson continued to write, and eventually, her work appeared in anthologies.^[3]

After a long and quiet life, Helene Johnson died on July 6, 1995^[3] in Manhattan at the age of 89.^[4]

Career

The start of Johnson's literary career began when she became affiliated with the Saturday Evening Quill Club, where she claimed first prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Boston Chronicle.

Johnson published several periodicals throughout the 1920s and early 1930s when she was 19 years old.^[5] During this time, she published over thirty different pieces of poetry in many different magazines. These magazines typically were African-American known, and included the NAACP's The Crisis, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. She gained most of her notoriety from her work published in the journal of the National Urban League, Opportunity, which was a leading platform that showcased the talents of African-American artists.^[6] In 1925, Johnson collected multiple honorable mentions in a poetry contest organized by Opportunity. It was also in 1925 that Johnson received her first poetry award in the National Urban League's Inaugural Contest. In 1926, six of her poems were published by Opportunity. Her poetry also appears in the first, and only, issue of Fire!!, a magazine edited by Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, and Richard Bruce Nugent. Because of this recognition, many renowned poets of the time began recognizing her potential and considered her to be outstanding for her age. These awarded poets include Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and others.

She, along with Dorothy West, moved to Harlem in 1927, where they began taking classes at Colombia University to improve their writing. It was during this time they met and became friends with writers mentioned previously, such as Zora Neale Hurston.

She reached the height of her popularity in 1927, when her poem, "Bottled", was published in the May issue of Vanity Fair. The poem was known to illustrate varying aspects of African-American culture through vivid writing:

"And he wouldn't be carrying no cane.

He'd be carrying a spear with a sharp fine point

Like the bayonets we had “over there."

And the end of it would be dipped in some kind of

Hoo-doo poison. And he'd be dancin' black and naked and gleaming.

And he'd have rings in his ears and on his nose

And bracelets and necklaces of elephants' teeth.

Gee, I bet he'd be beautiful then all right.

No one would laugh at him then, I bet".

This passage from her poem, "Bottled", is a strong example of her poetry and depiction of African-American culture.

In 1935, Johnson's last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly. Though her free verse poems are more often anthologized, her sonnets offer complex and sometimes deliberately ambiguous portrayals of black women's integrity. In particular, in two of her sonnets, “Missionary Brings a Young Native to America “and “Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” the shared contrast between sonnet and song is illuminated. This is one way that Johnson exploits the nuances of the form to simultaneously embody and critique the American sonnet tradition^[7] through her writing.

She continued to write one poem a day for the rest of her life, even after leaving the public eye.

Writing Style

A notable point to be made about Johnson is her style of writing. Her style and topics included in her poetry were curated from the era in which her writing became known.

She is known for her descriptive poems that deal with major social topics such as gender and femininity,^[8] music, and the most evident social topic of race.

Johnson's tone in her poems was generally considered to conform to the standard of what formal, female writing was. This meant that while coping with difficult topics in her poetry, the tone is soft, constant, and conventional, making her work stand out in its simplicity and gentle nature while still being able to get across bold points. We see this in her poem, "A Missionary Brings a Young Native to America". This poem portrays the gentleness of Johnson while writing about difficult topics:

All day she heard the mad stampede of feet

Push by her in a thick unbroken haste.

A thousand unknown terrors of the street

Caught at her timid heart, and she could taste

The city of grit upon her tongue. She felt

A steel-spiked wave of brick and light submerge

Her mind in cold immensity. A belt

Of alien tenets choked the songs that surged

Within her when alone each night she knelt

At prayer. And as the moon grew large and white

Above the roof, afraid that she would scream

Aloud her young abandon to the night,

She mumbled Latin litanies and dream

Unholy dreams while waiting for the light.

This poem exemplifies her use of soft language integrated into her work while framing the harsh realities that live in her writing.

As mentioned before, the Harlem Renaissance was in full bloom. Johnson was able to write and make a name for herself in this era of emerging African-American artists, which speaks to how powerful her works of writing are. Her poems were often said to be extremely relatable and comforting for those reading her work. Other notable pieces from Johnson that highlight these social topics include “Trees at Night”, “The Road”,^[5] and several others. She published over 30 pieces of poetry.

Influences

Helene had many influences on her writing. Some of these influences would later grow into friendships because of Johnson's role in the African-American poetry community.

In William Stanley Braithwaite's writing, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1926, there is a brief note that includes a list of a few of Helene Johnson's favorite poets. This list includes Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Carl Sandburg.^[6]

Johnson was also acquainted with other major literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson.^[2]

Even though many of these writers were Johnson's friends, she still accredited them as influencing her writing.

Poetry Topics

The Harlem Renaissance is a major depiction of Johnson's writing and is an inspiration for a lot of her poetry. Strong social topics were a consistent theme across her writing.

As an African-American woman in the United States, she was a member of many marginalized groups. Not only do her poems discuss difficult attitudes toward race that were prevalent at the time, but they also discuss gender and age. Her poetry attested to different movements and issues that were a reality for many other African-American women. Some of the notable poems that provide these issues include, "Fulfillment"^[8] which includes pieces that discuss women and society, "Bottled" which shows issues of African-Americans in the English world, and many other famous pieces of writing.

Johnson's inspiration for her writing tended to come from the world around her and what she observed in societal interactions between different categories of individuals.