Hello Friends,
Georgia Douglas Johnson was a Harlem Renaissance poet, playwright, and newspaper columnist. Of mixed African American, Native American, and white descent, she was far ahead of her time in portraying race as a social construct — in works like "Common Dust."
Today's quatrain from The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918) is a beautiful building up to a powerful last line, reinforced with perfect rhyme.
Enjoy.
Ellen
The Measure
Fierce is the conflict—the battle of eyes,
Sure and unerring, the wordless replies,
Challenges flash from their ambushing caves—
Men, by their glances, are masters or slaves.
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