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The Heart of a Woman

Johnson was well recognized by her poems in The Heart of a Woman, published in 1918. She explores meaningful themes for women during The Harlem Renaissance such as isolation, loneliness, pain, love and the role of being a woman during this time. Other poems in this collection consist of motherly concerns. 

The Heart of a Woman

Georgia Douglas Johnson

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,

Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam

In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,

And enters some alien cage in its plight,

And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars

While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. 

Bronze

Johnson’s Bronze had a popular theme of racial issues during this time as well as Johnson’s continuous theme of motherhood and being a woman of color.

“Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in 1922- know it not so much in fact as in feeling..”

[1]

Calling Dreams

The right to make my dreams come true,

I ask, nay, I demand of life;

Nor shall fate's deadly contraband

Impede my steps, nor countermand;

Too long my heart against the ground

Has beat the dusty years around;

And now at length I rise! I wake!

And stride into the morning break!