Boston, MA 02215, USA
Helene Johnson attended Boston University.
116th St & Broadway, New York, NY 10027, United States
Helene Johnson studied at Columbia University but did not graduate.
Boston, MA 02215, USA
Helene Johnson attended Boston University.
116th St & Broadway, New York, NY 10027, United States
Helene Johnson studied at Columbia University but did not graduate.
(From a never before seen manuscript of poems by Harlem Re...)
From a never before seen manuscript of poems by Harlem Renaissance poet Helene Johnson to a treasure trove of Adrienne Rich's teaching materials from City College, this new series overturns all expectations.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Found-Poetics-Document-Initiative/dp/0988894513/?tag=2022091-20
Helene was born July 7, 1907, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Shortly after her birth, her father left, leaving her to be raised by her mother, Ella, and grandfather, Benjamin Benson, who was born into slavery. Helene Johnson grew up surrounded by her mother and aunts, a group of strong women who later influenced her distinctive voice in poetry.
Helene Johnson attended Boston University. She also studied at Columbia University but did not graduate.
Johnson left Boston in 1926 to join the cultural movements in Harlem. Johnson began publishing poetry in African-American magazines such as the NAACP’s The Crisis, which was founded in 1910 and edited by W.E.B. Du Bois.
She began to attract attention when she was published in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in 1925 when she was nineteen years old. A year later, the journal published six of her poems. By that time, Johnson had already won awards for her poetic work. Critic Charles S. Johnson said of the poem “Fulfillment”: “Helene Johnson has a lyric penetration which belies her years, and a rich and impetuous power.”
Following her marriage to William Hubbell in 1934, Johnson vanished from the public sphere almost entirely, preferring to raise her daughter in a quiet way. Johnson’s early work remains of interest to those investigating the Harlem Renaissance, however; as Lorraine Elena Roses and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph explain in Harlem and Beyond, “Johson’s verse captures the concern and excitement inherent in the Harlem Renaissance movement.”
Though little is known of Johnson’s time among the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance - she apparently knew Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and others - her presence among those figures is recorded in Wallace Thurman’s novel, Infants of the Spring (1932). Johnson was swept up into literary fame so quickly, and at such a young age, that her work was not given much time to mature. Roses and Randolph explain: “In retrospect, her talent can be considered only that of a minor poet of the period, for the bulk of her work was produced over a short time and was very similar. She never ventured further, nor did she continue with her writing long enough to grow and develop.” But some of the poems Johnson published are quite remarkable, worthy of her early accolades.
In 1929, Johnson returned to Boston, and within a few years had stopped publishing her poetry. Her verse, which had been so overwhelmingly praised and welcomed just a few years before, almost disappeared. But the poems she published during that time are valuable in themselves, not only as records of the energy of the time, but as verses.
She continued to write a poem a day for the rest of her life. Johnson died in Manhattan at the age of 88.
Helene Johnson is best known for the poems she published in the 1920s and 1930s. She was one of the youngest and most promising poets of the Harlem Renaissance movement. She valued the working class and took pride in their accomplishments, capturing in her poetry the voice and rhythms of the streets of Harlem. “Bottled” and “Ah My Race” are arguably her most famous poems.
(From a never before seen manuscript of poems by Harlem Re...)
Johnson became deeply engrossed in the struggles of the economic and racial divide in Harlem, and wrote passionately about these issues. She was later described as a writer who “… combines an expression of unquenchable desires with realistic description of ghetto life and a discovery of the roots of her people.”
Helene was a member of Saturday Evening Quill Club of Boston.
Johnson seems to have been a modest and shy woman who allowed little of her personal life to be made public.
Quotes from others about the person
Poet Rita Dove said of her work: “Helene Johnson proved herself a lyricist of utmost delicacy yet steely precision; restraint attends her every meditation on love, race and loss.”
In 1933, Johnson married William Warner Hubbell III. The couple had one child, Abigail, before divorcing.
