Chapter 4b: Harlem on Fire: Desire and Eroticism, 1920-1928
A play on words on the experimental literary magazine FIRE!!, this section contains poetry surrounding desire, eroticism, and often love. The 1920s was a time demarcated by redefining identity and challenging social norms. Within this vibrant period, African American poets explored the intersections of love, desire, and identity in ways that often defied mainstream conventions, embracing and centralizing their own experiences. These women engaged with themes of romantic and sensual longing, often depicting intimate relationships with an emotional richness. This exploration encompassed not only heterosexual and homogamous relationships but also queer and interracial expressions of desire
Angelina Weld Grimké, “The Black Finger” (1925)
I have just seen a most beautiful thing
Slim and still,
Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight black cypress,
Sensitive,
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?
Just as we saw with the reinvention of Blackness (in the previous chapter), here Grimké concisely explores the lines between beauty, race, existentialism, and sensuality. The poem’s opening lines immediately draw readers into an intimate moment of aesthetic appreciation, juxtaposing a “black cypress” to a “gold, gold sky.” The repetition of “gold” not highlights the sky’s coloring but also contrasts both visually and linguistically with the “black cypress.” Described as “slim,” “still,” “sensitive,” and “exquisite,” the cypress is no longer a tree, becoming “A black finger / Pointing Upwards.” This leads the speaker to question, why the “beautiful still finger” is “black” and “pointing upwards?” Paralleling these questions, Grimké blurs racial identity with a broader search for meaning in a world where only the “sky” and “cypress” exist with the Black finger.
Through not answering the questions, Grimke leaves readers thinking about the importance of the upward-pointing gesture. On one level, this could signify a sense of aspiration or reaching toward something higher–perhaps a spiritual, intellectual, or societal goal. However, it most likely implies an “exquisite[ness]” and “sensitiv[ity]” of Blackness that is found through sensuality. It is also important to note that pronouns of the finger’s owner are left ambiguous; this was a move that Grimké often made when implying a female (same sex) lover. If this is in fact about sapphic desire, this could imply sex for non-reproductive purposes that transcend bodily and patriarchal limits.
Georgia Douglas Johnson, "I Want to Die While You Love Me" (1922)
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While Laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me
And bear to that still bed
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
To warm me when I’m dead.
I want to die while you love me;
Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give?
I want to die while you love me,
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim, or cease to be!
Here, the speaker wishes to die at the peak of being loved, capturing the essence of unscathed connection. Phrases like “While Laughter lies upon my lips / And lights are in my hair” evoke a scene of youthful joy that the speaker wishes to freeze in time. The desire to carry the passion of their lover’s kisses “to that still bed” suggests a wish for love to remain unending even in death. Johnson deepens this sentiment by questioning the value of living beyond love’s peak: “Oh, who would care to live / Till love has nothing more to ask / And nothing more to give?”
This poem echoes and is a response to the carpe diem tradition, where male writers would attempt to seduce young female lovers by urging them to ‘seize the day’ and have sex with the speaker before the woman dies and/or ages. Within Johnson’s poem, the speaker’s belief that the highest point of love is worth preserving, even at the cost of life, alludes to the root of the carpe diem fear—the gradual decline of passion with the passing of time. The final stanza reinforces the desire to avoid witnessing love “Grow dim, or cease” to exist.
Jessie Fauset, "Touche" (1927)
Dear, when we sit in that high, placid room,
"Loving” and “doving” as all lovers do,
Laughing and leaning so close in the gloom,—
What is the change that creeps sharp over you?
Just as you raise your fine hand to my hair,
Bringing that glance of mixed wonder and rue?
“Black hair,” you murmur, “so lustrous and rare,
Beautiful too, like a raven's smooth wing;
Surely no gold locks were ever more fair."
Why do you say every night that same thing?
Turning your mind to some old constant theme,
Half meditating and half murmuring?
Tell me, that girl of your young manhood's dream,
Her you loved first in that dim long ago
Had she blue eyes? Did her hair goldly gleam?
Does she come back to you softly and slow,
Stepping wraith-wise from the depths of the past?
Quickened and fired by the warmth of our glow?
There I've divined it! My wit holds you fast.
Nay, no excuses; 'tis little I care.
I knew a lad in my own girlhood's past,—
Blue eyes he had and such waving gold hair!
Fauset creates a moment shared between lovers, revealing deeper complexities beneath their interactions. Set in a “high, placid room,” the poem’s speaker addresses her lover, who admires her “lustrous and rare” black hair nightly. This admiration, however, prompts the speaker to question the underlying thoughts of her lover, suspecting that he is comparing her to a past love with “gold locks'' and “blue eyes.” The poem subtly exposes the insecurities and unspoken comparisons that linger within their relationship, hinting at a difference between the lover’s racial identity and broader distinctions between how idealized beauty is racialized white. The repetitive admiration of the speaker’s hair by her hair suggests that he is struggling to reconcile his past ideal with his present reality. The poem’s introspective tone shifts to a more assertive one as the speaker confronts these lingering memories, reflecting on her own past with a “lad” who had “blue eyes'' and “waving gold hair.” This parallel serves to equalize their experiences, suggesting a mutual understanding of the complexities of love and desire and the enduring impact of past relationships to the present.
Mae V. Cowdery, "Dusk" (1927)
Like you
Letting down your
Purpled shadowed hair
To hide the rose and gold
Of your loveliness
And your eyes peeping thru
Like beacon lights
In the gathering darkness.
Similarly to Fauset, Cowdery also captures an intimate moment between lovers; however, Cowdery writes about the beauty of another woman at twilight, showing the romantic and sensual transition from day to night. Imagistically, the poem is focused on the visual and emotional connection between the women: one letting down her “purpled shadowed hair” to hide the “rose and gold” of her “loveliness,” while the other watches. This act of letting down her hair can be seen as an intimate and tender gesture, creating a private, shared space between the two. The “purpled shadowed hair” serves as a metaphor for the encroaching dusk that cloaks the world in shadow but also symbolizes the act of revealing yourself to a lover. This act of concealment does not diminish the woman’s beauty; rather, it transforms it, allowing her eyes to shine “like beacons of light.” This imagery evokes the idea of an inner beauty persisting through the changes of the external world. Cowdery’s gentle, contemplative tone invites readers to appreciate the subtleties of natural transitions, reflecting broader themes of transformation and the enduring nature of love and desire. More specifically, she explores sapphic love and the delicate interplay between what is revealed and what is concealed within queer relationships.
Further reading: Queer and Homoerotic Poetry Tag