sess / With some resplendent loveliness.” The sec-
tion closes as the speaker reaches a distressing but
ultimately helpful state of awareness. In “Delusion,”
she laments that she has been “blind,” deceived by
“your hand... the last word, the dear word, / The
soul’s entity.” The section’s final poem, “Sunset,”
thus returns to the barricaded home that emerged
in the section’s first works. Now, she acts “as one
who closes up the house and goes uncaring where /
He may forget the scenes of home ’mid foreign
climes and air,” and declares without fanfare, “I bar
the chamber of my heart and seal the past within.”
The 11 poems in “Contemplation” range from
self-indulgent notes about the innate neediness of
women, the painful aftermath that so often follows
the loss of a lover, and the assurance that her feel-
ings, though difficult, signal her ability to love and
to feel. “Since I have known the purple gleam /
That lifts above me,” she wonders, “can I deem /
The way unlighted—when I go / Encircled by
love’s afterglow?” The burgeoning sense of self-
possession that marks “Contemplation” flourishes
in “Intermezzi.” Here, innocence is no longer a
hallmark of love; instead, it is the notion of
woman’s choice that becomes the dominant mode.
On the heels of this emancipatory state, however,
comes “Penseroso,” the second-to-last section and
the one in which the reality of loss finally becomes
unavoidable. The speaker is still well fortified,
however, to withstand the melancholy and the re-
ality that she confronts. In the plainly titled poem
“Armor,” she states directly, “You cannot hurt me
any more / For I am armored now / And I can look
into your face / With cool, unfevered brow.” The
poems of “Cadence” reveal the speaker’s desire to
prevail and her efforts to maintain her emotional
composure about a love affair in which she was
wholly absorbed. In the poem “Offering,” she notes
primly, “I seek no token of you dear” before con-
fessing that “when for you the final sun / Moves to-
ward the darkening West, / I shall be lingering to
place / Love’s flower on your breast.” The volume
closes as the earnest speaker remains fully intent
on establishing the terms on which the relation-
ship truly will end. “Consider me a memory—a
dream / That passed away,” she advises. “Consider
me a melody / That served its simple turn / Or but
the residue of fire / That settles in the urn,” she
recommends in “Recessional.” Yet, the incurable
romantic cannot divorce herself from the past, and
in the volume’s final meditation, “Afterglow,” she
indulges her feelings for the last time. “I would give
a thousand worlds / To live it all again!” she de-
clares in a statement that suggests both passion
and recklessness.
ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON, Johnson’s close
friend and a talented writer herself, noted the pub-
lication of Autumn Love Cyclein her diary. The
entry for 18 December 1928 is brief but telling:
“Have fun reading Georgia’s new book of poems—
Autumn Love Cycle” (Hull, GUTD284). Johnson
also received praise from her contemporaries. JEAN
TOOMER, to whom she had sent verses for consid-
eration, insisted that Johnson’s work “come[s]
nearer [to] my heart than anything I’ve read.” Yet,
scholar Claudia Tate suggests that Toomer’s pas-
sionate response was less than sincere and that he
was “unbeknownst to Johnson... a patronizing
reader of her work” who believed that any “lyric
gift” that she did have was impeded by “too much
poetic jargon, too many inhibitions” (Tate, xxx).
Johnson’s verse is powerful for its humaniza-
tion of women and its evolving considerations of
feminist thought. Her efforts to chronicle love also
produce subtle commentaries on the development
of independent thought and the power of choice.
Such work counters the images of silenced or op-
pressed women who populate the works of writers
like Jean Toomer and CLAUDEMCKAYand enrich
the overall consideration of gendered experience
during the Harlem Renaissance.Bibliography
Hull, Gloria, ed. Give Us This Day: The Diary of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson.New York: W. W. Norton & Com-
pany, 1984.
Hull, Gloria. Love, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers
of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
Tate, Claudia. Introduction in The Selected Works of
Georgia Douglas Johnson.New York: G. K. Hall &
Co., 1997.Autumn Love Cycle, An 19