Poetry
In 1922, he edited The Book of American Negro Poetry, which the Academy of American Poets calls "a major contribution to the history of African-American literature." One of the works for which he is best remembered today, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, was published in 1927 and celebrates the tradition of the folk preacher. In 1917, Johnson published 50 Years and Other Poems.
Read more about this topic: James Weldon Johnson
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
““Ask the perfumers, ask the blacking-makers, ask the hatters, ask the old lottery-office keepers—ask any man among ‘em what my poetry has done for him, and mark my words, he blesses the name of Slum. If he’s an honest man, he raises his eyes to heaven, and blesses the name of Slum—mark that!”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)