A Black Man Talks of Reaping

Books by Arna Bontemps

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A Black Man Talks of Reaping

I have sown beside all waters in my day

I planted deep, within my heart the fear

That wind or fowl would take the grain away.

I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land

In rows from Canada to Mexico

But for my reaping only what the hand

Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields

My brother' sons are gathering stalk and root,

Small wonder then my children glean in fields

They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruits

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Idolatry

You have been good to me, I give you this:

The arms of lovers empty as our own,

marble lips sustaining one long kiss

And the hard sound of hammers breaking stone.

For I will build a chapel in the place

Where our love died and I will journey there

To make a sign and kneel before your face

And set an old bell tolling on the air.

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Reconnaissance

After the cloud embankments,

The lamentation of wind

And the starry descent into time,

We came to the flashing waters and shaded our eyes

From the glare.

Alone with the shore and the harbor,

The stems of the cocoanut trees,

The fronds of silence and hushed music,

We cried for the new revelation

And waited for miracles to rise.

Where elements touch and emerge,

Where shadows swoon like outcasts on the sand

And the tired moment waits, its courage gone—

There were we

In latitudes where storms are born.

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Anyplace But Here

Arna Wendell Bontemps : A Bibliography

Robert E Fleming. James Weldon Johnson and Arna Wendell Bontemps: A reference guide. G. K. Hall, 1978

Kirkland C. Jones. Man from Louisiana; A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps.. Greenwood Press, 1992.

Sterling Brown "Arna Bontemps: Co-worker, Comrade." Black World 22:11 (September 1973): 92-98.

Wikipedia-Wendell_Bontemps

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updated 13 October 2007

Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973) -- born in Alexandria, Louisiana, the son of Creole parents -- was one of the more prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He was the author of over 25 books of poetry, history, biography, fiction and anthologies. Bontemps was a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Bontemps served as head librarian at Fisk University from 1969 to 1972. He was also curator of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale University. In 1923, Bontemps received his B.A. from Pacific Union College in Angwin. In 1924, his poetry appeared in Crisis magazine, the NACCP periodical edited by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois.

In 1926 Golgotha Is a Mountain won the Alexander Pushkin Award and in 1927 Nocturne at Bethesda achieved first honors in the Crisis poetry contest. Personals, a collection of poetry was published in 1963.

Bontemps then turned to prose. In the decade of the thirties, he wrote three acclaimed novels God Sends Sunday (1931); Black Thunder (1936); and Drums at Dusk (1939). Frustrated in his ability to reach his own generation Bontemps to literature for children and young graders. In 1937 he published the Sad-Faced Boy; and others for young audience included We Have Tomorrow (1945) Slappy Hopper (1946) and Story of the Negro (1948).

Bontemps was involved in the publication of at least three anthologies: Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers (1941); with Langston Hughes, The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949 (1949); and Bontemps, American Negro Poetry (1963 & 1974 rev.). Bontemps was gracious enough to include Christian's poems in all his anthologies.

Bontemps' beautiful short story "A Summer Tragedy" is found often in anthologies. It is indeed a treat. His poems "A Black Man Thinks of Reaping," "Southern Mansion," and "Nocturne at Bethesda" are often anthologized. But such poems as "My Heart Has Known Its Winter" and "Day Breakers" are also found in anthologies.

Early in his career Bontemps had wanted to get a Ph.D. in English but with his marriage in 1926 and the coming of six children he had to work. He taught for awhile at an Alabama junior college. With the coming of the Depression he worked for the Illinois WPA and supervised and assisted in the writing of a history of the Negro in Illinois. In 1943 he completed a degree in library science and served as librarian at Fisk University and developed an archive of African American cultural materials that is a major resource for study in this field.