POETRY (1922) and COUNTEE CULLEN’s edited
collection CAROLING DUSK (1925), as well as
AMERICANMERCURY,THECRISIS,THEMESSEN-
GER, Opportunity,and Fire!!In addition to her 21
installments of “The Ebony Flute,” her works in-
clude the short story “Wedding Day,” extant paint-
ings, sketches, and cover art, and the poems “Dear
Things,” “Epitaph,” “Hatred,” “Heritage,” “Lines
Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas,” “Pur-
gation,” “Quatrains,” “Song” “To a Dark Girl,”
“Sonnet–2,” “Tokens,” and “To Usward.”
During the Harlem Renaissance, Bennett was
hailed for the “delicate poignant lyrics” of her poems.
Many of her poetical works convey her fascination
with a haunting and empowering African past. Their
power is rooted in Bennett’s deliberate and sobering
contemplations of American slavery and its enduring
effect on African Americans. Bennett used rhyming
couplets and conventional rhyme schemes to endow
works such as “On a Birthday” (1925) with espe-
cially playful messages. Her use of free verse in the
majority of her poetical works, however, reinforced
the unique and meditative qualities of her poems.
Bennett’s poems were published widely in jour-
nals of the period, and many reflected the Renais-
sance interest in delineating black experience and
celebrating the seductive and intriguing aspects of
black identity. Bennett’s poem “Heritage,” which
predates Countee Cullen’s similarly titled poem, is
reminiscent of LANGSTONHUGHES’s often-anthol-
ogized poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” It un-
derscores the romanticism that prevailed during the
Renaissance and that was rooted in notions of an
uncorrupted African past. Several of Bennett’s
poems feature speakers who evolve from lonely
spectators to earnest participants in the worlds
around them. Bennett’s insistent message about the
life-changing power of experience reflects her belief
in a people’s need for their history and the allure of
the past.
Bennett’s poems frequently portray the plight
and triumphs of outsiders. Poems such as “To a
Dark Girl,” “Lines Written at the Grave of Alexan-
der Dumas,” and “Song” are peopled by individuals
whose isolation fuels their desire for racial solidar-
ity and uplift. Bennett’s representations of loss and
exile reveal her efforts to communicate a deliber-
ate sense of mourning about racial oppression and
black disenfranchisement. In poems such as “Ha-
tred,” however, Bennett creates formidable female
characters who are intent on self-control and gain-
ing mastery of the natural world.
In the New Negroanthology, “Song” appeared
in the section entitled “Music” alongside poems by
Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and essays
on Negro spirituals and jazz by Locke and JOELAU-
GUSTUSROGERS, respectively. Like other Bennett
works, this poem celebrated the ways in which
African-American music transcended slavery and
offered generations a real connection to their past.
Bennett merged images of spirited camp meetings
with those of provocative dancing girls. The exu-
berance of the poem, symbolized by its use of el-
lipses and indentations, is threatened by references
to the chains of slavery and metaphorical bondage
of blackface minstrelsy. The poem closes, however,
with what will become characteristic Bennett ex-
hortations. “Sing a little faster, / Sing a little faster, /
Sing!” urges the speaker, whose insistence here
stands in stark contrast to the description of an in-
dulgent creative process in the poem’s first lines.
The call for creative production and the inextrica-
ble link between African-American history and
black creativity in this poem become defining ele-
ments in Bennett’s future works. Over the course of
her literary career, Gwendolyn Bennett’s poems, fic-
tion, and prose writings reflected her passion for
black history, her steady belief in female agency, and
her unwavering commitment to exhort her race.Bibliography
Govan, Sandra. “Kindred Spirits and Sympathetic Souls:
Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett in the
Harlem Renaissance” in C. James Trotman (ed.),
Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Contin-
uing Influence.New York: Garland Publishers, 1995.
———. “After the Renaissance: Gwendolyn Bennett
and the WPA Years,” MAWA Review3, no. 2 (De-
cember 1988): 27–31.
Gwendolyn Bennett Papers, Schomburg Center for Re-
search in Black Culture, New York Public Library.Berlack, Thelma(1906–unknown)
After showing exceptional promise in journalism
while still a Florida high school student, Berlack
went on to study journalism at NEWYORKUNI-
VERSITY. While still an undergraduate, she beganBerlack, Thelma 31