Helene Johnson

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

Her mother, Ella categories a domestic worker. Her father, George William, left soon after her birth. She was raised by her mother, Ella, and her grandfather, Benjamin Benson. Her mother was the child of former slaves. When growing up, Johnson was raised in a town near Boston called 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 had 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. Johnson was raised with her cousin and Harlem Renaissance novelist and short-story writer Dorothy West in Brookline, Massachusetts. The two spent summers together in Oak Bluffs.

Helene received her high school education at the Boston Girl's Latin School, which was considered at the time to be an exceptional public school.

After high school, Johnson attended both Boston University and Colombia University but did not graduate.

Although her poetry was highly regarded, her career was short on her own terms. Sometime during or after 1929, Johnson left New York and returned to Boston, and after this move, she did not publish any more of her poetry.[2] This was the time when she had her single child. Although she was well known for the work that she and already done, she settled down in Manhattan in New York City, New York and worked jobs that were unrelated to poetry. Along with ending her career in poetry, she also began staying away from all media,[1] even if it was praise, and was not heard from much again. However, Johnson continued to write, and her work appeared in anthologies. [3]

In 1933, Johnson married William Warner Hubbell III. Together, they had one child, Abigail. Although it is understood that Helene and her husband William divorced, there is no legal documentation of this occurring.

Johnson died on July 6, 1995[4] in Manhattan at the age of 89.[5]

Johnson's literary career began when she joined the Saturday Evening Quill Club and won first prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Boston Chronicle.

Johnson published several poems throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. In this period of time, she published over thirty different pieces of poetry in several different magazines. At the age of nineteen, she began to publish her poems in periodicals.[6] She published poetry in many African-American magazines, including 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.[7] In 1925, Johnson received 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 seeing her potential and considered her to be outstanding for her age. Some of these 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. 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 sometimes deliberately ambiguous portrayals of black women's integrity in particular two of her sonnets “Missionary brings a young Native to America “and “Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” show how the shared contrast between sonnet and song reveals one way that Johnson exploits the nuances of the form to simultaneously embody and critique the American sonnet tradition[8]

She continued to write a poem a day for the rest of her life.

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,[9] music, and the most evident social topic of race.

Johnson’s tone in her poems was generally considered to fit the standard of what formal, female writing was. While dealing with difficult topics in her poetry, the tone is soft, constant, and conventional and makes her work stand out in its simplicity and gentle nature while still being able to get across bold points.

During this time, 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 truly speaks to how powerful her works of writing are. Notable pieces from Johnson that highlight these social topics that are highly regarded by the poetry community today include “Trees at Night”, “The Road”,[6] and several others. She published over 30 pieces of poetry.

William Stanley Braithwaite's Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1926 includes a brief note that lists a few of Helene Johnson's favorite poets, including Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Carl Sandburg.[7]

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

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"[9] 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. Her inspiration for her writing tended to come from the world around her and what she observed in societal interactions between different categories of individuals.

• Bryan, T. J. “THE PUBLISHED POEMS OF HELENE JOHNSON.” The Langston Hughes Review, vol. 6, no. 2, 1987, pp. 11–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26432834.
• Fillman, Robert. “Toward an Understanding of Helene Johnson’s Hybrid Modernist Poetics.” CLA Journal, vol. 61, no. 1–2, 2017, pp. 45–64. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26559628.
• Rutter, Emily R. “‘Belch the Pity! / Straddle the City!’: Helene Johnson’s Late Poetry and the Rhetoric of Empowerment.” African American Review, vol. 47, no. 4, 2014, pp. 495–509. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24589836.
• JIMOH, A. YĘMISI. “MAPPING THE TERRAIN OF BLACK WRITING DURING THE EARLY NEW NEGRO ERA.” College Literature, vol. 42, no. 3, 2015, pp. 488–524. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24544455. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.
• Shockley, Ann Allen. African-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide. New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books.
• Patton, Venetria K.; Maureen Honey. Double Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology. Rutgers University Press (2001). ISBN 0-8135-2930-1
• Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Helene Johnson | Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/helene-johnson
• Esparza, Crystal; Klohs, Caroline; Cyprian, Camille. (2005). Helene Johnson. Voices from the Gaps. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, hdl:11299/166238.

• Review of This Waiting for Love by Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance
• Article by poet Rita Dove, 2000
• AA Registry Entry for Helene Johnson.
• Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With) by Daisy Goodwin (contains Helene Johnson's poem, "Futility")
• Article by Linda Lewis