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Autumn Love Cycle, AnGeorgia Douglas
Johnson(1928)
The third volume of poetry published by GEORGIA
DOUGLASJOHNSON, a prolific poet and playwright
who was at the center of the WASHINGTON, D.C.,
Harlem Renaissance literary movement. ALAIN
LOCKEwrote the introduction to the collection that
Johnson dedicated to ZONAGALE, the white writer
who had encouraged her to write plays and who also
had supported Jessie Fauset’s writing efforts.
Regarded as the most autobiographical, mature,
and polished of Johnson’s published works, An Au-
tumn Love Cycleis believed to have been prompted
by a love affair. It contains “I Want to Die While
You Love Me,” one of her most anthologized poems
and the one that OWENDODSONread at Johnson’s
funeral. The book, published by the lesser known
New York City press of Harold Vinal, Limited, in-
cluded a portion of a unadorned and whimsical title
sketch by MARYEFFIELEENEWSOMEand Johnson’s
sincere overture to Gale in which she thanked her
for the “appreciation, encouragement and helpful
criticism” that had “so heartened me.” She also
thanked Locke and the white writer CLEMENT
WOODfor their “helpful criticism and suggestions”
as she prepared the volume for publication.
The foreword to the volume, like that which
W. E. B. DUBOIScontributed to Johnson’s second
collection BRONZE(1922), was both complemen-
tary and somewhat suspect. Locke, who was well
known as a misogynist and who invested much
more energy in advancing the careers of men than
he did women, praised Johnson for choosing “with
singular felicity, indeed with the felicity of instinct,
her special domain in art.” The domain and the
writerly task to which he referred was “the docu-
menting of the feminine heart.” Such work was as
“welcome as it is rare,” he suggested, because “the
emotions of woman, time-old though they be and
hackneyed over as in a sense they really are, are
still but half expressed.” In closing, he refrained
from suggesting that the volume of poems had sig-
nificant intellectual heft. “Whatever the philo-
sophical yield,” he wrote, “we are grateful for the
prospect of such lyricism.”
The collection is divided into five sections,
each of which contributes to the cycle suggested by
the book’s title. “Cycle,” the first section and the
largest group of poems, is followed by “Contempla-
tion,” “Intermezzi,” “Penseroso,” and finally, “Ca-
dence.” As Johnson scholar Gloria Hull notes, the
collection is organized around “the organic process
of the romance” (Hull, 175). Johnson abandons
the highly structured classical language and con-
ventions that she used in earlier work and employs
free verse to generate compelling and authentic
meditations on emotional awakening, anticipation,
desire realized, and unwavering devotion. The vol-
ume is enriched by the evolution of the speaker, a
woman who offers unmediated perspectives on her
emotions, ego, and undulating levels of self-confi-
dence. In “Cycle,” the speaker moves from a state
of painful solitude and suspense into the early
stages of interaction with a beloved. The first
poem, “I Closed My Shutters Fast Last Night,” is,
despite its melancholy, a romantic account of sin-
gle life. “I left my lagging heart outside / Within
the dark alone,” recalls the speaker who then re-
veals that the natural world tends to that aching
heart and does so well. “Upon my sleepless couch I
lay / Until the tranquil morn / Came through the
silver silences / To bring my heart forlorn / Restor-
ing it with calm caress / Unto its sheltered bower.”
Words such as “Oh night of love” confirm the ar-
rival of passion and the speaker’s transition into
“groves of strange content” and her enjoyment of
“kisses” and “rapt ecstatic hours.” Yet, by “Pre-
view,” she is doubting her ability to prevail in the
face of competition. “I fear my power impotent / To
hold you leal and full content,” she writes, “I trem-
ble lest some stranger friar / Arrest you,—cause
you to compare / The meagre charms which I pos-18 Autumn Love Cycle, An