Mae V. Cowdery, a Harlem Renaissance Poet to Rediscover

By Nava Atlas | On November 27, 2024 | Updated December 2, 2024 | Comments (0)

Mae Virginia Cowdery (also known as Mae V. Cowdery; January 10, 1909 – November 2, 1948) is a forgotten poetic voice of the Harlem Renaissance era of the 1920s. A selection of her earlier poems is presented here.

Mae was the only child of professional parents who were part of Philadelphia’s Black elite. They instilled in her their values of racial pride, equality, and respect for the arts.

Above right, Mae in 1928 at age nineteen, sporting an androgynous look.

While still a student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, three of Mae’s poems were published in Black Opals, a prestigious short-lived (1927 – 1928) literary journal of a Philadelphia cultural organization of the same name.

For the fledgling poet, 1927 was a banner year. In addition to publication in Black Opals, she won first prize for her poem “Longings” in an NAACP-sponsored competition. It was published in the association’s journal, The Crisis. She won the Krigwa Prize for “Lamps, ” and “Dusk” was chosen for Ebony and Topaz, an anthology of Black poets published that same year.

Mae attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with the aim of studying fashion design. Though she didn’t complete her studies, her sojourn in New York City was an entry into the lively cultural scene in Greenwich Village. Perhaps that’s where she encountered the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose poetry she admired. She also enjoyed a lively correspondence with Langston Hughes, who greatly encouraged her poetic endeavors.

After her early successes, she continued to have her poems published in journals and anthologies highlighting writers now associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1936, Mae produced a limited edition of 350 copies of We Lift Our Voices: And Other Poems, which was critically well received. And because there were relatively few copies printed, it’s difficult to obtain this book.

Not yet in the public domain, its contents are not freely distributed online. I was fortunate enough to see one of the rare copies in the main branch of the New York Public Library, and the poetry is just beautiful. Hopefully it can become more widely available when it falls into the public domain.

Mae’s bisexual life was an open a secret. Desire for both male and female love objects were expressed in her poetry. “Dusk” (1927), for example, begins: Like you / Letting down your  / Purpled shadowed hair  / To hide the rose and gold  /  Of your loveliness .… In “Love in These Days” a relationship sours between a woman and a man: Her eyes were hard  / And his bitter / As they sat and watched  / The fire fade …

After her sojourn in New York City, Mae returned to Philadelphia, married twice, had a daughter, and her life folded into the city’s Black elite. Society columns depicted her public persona as a young society matron, impeccably attired in dresses and pearls, a contrast to her androgynous portrait at age nineteen shown at the top of this post.

It’s not clear why Mae took her own life at the age of thirty-nine (in 1948). Her obituary made no mention that she was a published poet. Philadelphia-based anthropologist and activist Arthur Huff Fauset (half-brother of Jessie Redmon Fauset) wrote that Mae was “a flame that burned out rapidly … a flash in the pan with great potential who just wouldn’t settle down.” To be fair, we don’t know if she wouldn’t, or simply couldn’t, due to external pressures to conform.

Numbering more than sixty exquisite poems, Mae Cowdery’s body of work is significant, even in comparison to those contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance era who have remained known. One of the best overviews of her brief life can be found in Aphrodite’s Daughters: Three Modernist Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Maureen Honey (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

The following is a selection of poems by Mae Virginia Cowdery are in the public domain.

• Lamps
• Longings
• The Wind Blows
• Dusk
• Time
• Goal
• Hidden Moon
• My Body
• Nameless
• Love in These Days
• A Prayer
• Of the Earth
• Want

. . . . . . . . . .

Lamps

Bodies are lamps
And their life is the light.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Dwelling in the tabernacles
    Of the most high—are lamps.
Lighting the weary pilgrims’ way
    As they travel the dreary night—are lamps.
Swinging aloft in great Cathedrals
    Beaming on rich and poor alike—are lamps.
Flickering fitfully in harlot dives
    Wanton as they that dwell therein— are lamps.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Some flames rise high above the horizon
    And urge others to greater power.
Some burn steadfast thru the night
    To welcome the prodigal home.
Others flicker weakly, lacking oil to burn
    And slowly die unnoticed.
What matter how bright the flame
    How weak?
What matter how high it blazes
    How low?
A puff of wind will put it out.
You and I are lamps—Ebony lamps,
Our flame glows red and rages high within
But our ebon shroud becomes a shadow
And our light seems weak and low.
    Break that shadow
    And let the flame illumine heaven
    Or blow wind…blow
    And let our feeble lights go out.

(The Crisis, December 1927. This poem was one of two poems by Mae Cowdery that won first prize in the 1927 poetry competition in The Crisis, along with the next poem, “Longings”)

. . . . . . . . . .

Longings

To dance—
In the light of moon,
A platinum moon
Poised like a slender dagger
On the velvet darkness of night.

To dream—
’Neath the bamboo trees
On the sable breast
Of earth—
And listen to the wind.

To croon—
Weird sweet melodies
Round the cabin door
With banjos clinking softly—
And from out the shadow
Hear the beat of tom-toms
Resonant through the years.

To plunge—
My brown body
In a golden pool,
And lazily float on the swell
Watching the rising sun.

To stand—
On a purple mountain
Hidden from earth
By mists of dreams
And tears—

To talk—
With God.

(The Crisis, December 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Wind Blows

The wind blows.
My soul is like a tree
Lifting its face to the sun,
Flinging wide its branches
To catch the falling rain,
   To breathe into itself a fragrance
Of far-off fields of clover,
Of hidden vales of violets,—
The wind blows,—
It is spring!

The wind blows.
My soul is like sand,
Hot, burning sand
That drifts and drifts
Caught by the wind,
Swirling, stinging, swarting,
Silver in the moonlight.
Soft breath of lovers’ feet
Lulled to sleep by the lap of waves,
The wind blows—
It is summer!

The wind blows.
My soul is still
In silent reverie
Hearing sometimes a sigh
As the frost steals over the land
Nipping everywhere.
Earth is dead.
The woods are bare.
The last leaf is gone.
Nipped by death’s bitter frost,
My youth grown grey
Awaits the coming of
The new year.
The wind blows,—
It is winter!

(Opportunity, October 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Dusk

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. 

(Ebony and Topaz, 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Time

I used to sit on a high green hill
And long for you to be like the clouds,
Soft and white……….
And you eyes be like heaven’s blue
And your hair like the tree sifted sun……….
But then I was young, and my eyes yet
Round with wonder.
Now I site by an endless road and watch 
As you come……….swiftly like dusk
Your hair like a starless night
Your eyes like deep violet shadows,
And soft arms cradle me on your sweet
Brown breast……….for I have grown old
And my eyes hold unshed tears,
And my face is lean and hard in daylight’s
Mocking glare.
But with the night
Dusk fingers and lips like dew
Erase each wound of time
And my eyes grow round with wonder 
At your beauty. 

(Black Opals, Christmas 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

(shown above: Gwendolyn B. Bennett)
Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance to Rediscover and Read
. . . . . . . . . .

Goal

My words shall drip
Like molten lava
From the towering black volcano,
On the sleeping town
’Neath its summit.
My thoughts shall be
Hot ashes
Burning all in its path.

I shall not stop
Because critics sneer,
Nor stoop to fawning
At man’s mere fancy.

I shall breathe
A clearer freer air
For I shall see the sun
Above the crowd, 

I shall not blush
And make excuse
When a son of Adam,
Who calls himself
“God’s Layman,”
Slashes with scorn
A thing born from
Truth’s womb and nursed
By beauty. It will not
Matter who stoops
To cast the first stone.
Does not my spirit
Soar above these feeble
Minds? thoughts born
From prejudice’s womb
And nursed by tradition? 

I will shatter the wall
Of darkness that rises
From gleaming day
And seeks to hide the sun.
I will turn this wall of 
Darkness (that is night)
Into a thing of beauty.

I will take from the hearts
Of black men–
Prayers their lips 
Are ‘fraid to utter.
And turn their coarseness
Into a beauty of the jungle
Whence they came.

The lava from the black volcano
Shall be words–the ashes–thoughts 
Of all men.

(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Hidden Moon

My thoughts soared up
To the starless sky
And a cloud
Passed over the face
Of the yellow moon.
My thoughts
Are the clouds that hide
The face of the moon,
And yours are
The night wind
That blows away the ugly
Moon clouds. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

My Body

My body
Is an ugly thing
Fashioned by God.
My body
Is an empty thing
Made from crumbling sod.

My soul
Is a lovely thing
Fashioned by God.
My soul 
Is a flaming thing
That trampling hordes
Have left untrod. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Nameless

How like the restless beating
Of our hearts
Is the surge of the sea;
How like the tumult
Of our souls
Is the lashing of the storm;
How like the yearning
In our song
Is the wind,
How like a prayer
Is night.

(Black Opals, Christmas 1928)

. . . . . . . . . .

Love in These Days

Her eyes were hard
And his bitter
As they sat and watched 
The fire fade
From the ashes of their love.
Then they turned 
And saw the naked autumn wind
Shake the bare autumn trees,
And each one thought
As the cold came in–
……..”It might have been”……..

(Black Opals, June 1928)

. . . . . . . . . . .

A Prayer

I saw a dark boy
     Trudging on the road
(Twas’ a dreary road Blacker than night).
     Oft times he’d stumble
And stagger ‘neath his burden
     But still he kept trudging
Along that dreary road.

I heard a dark boy
     Singing as he passed
Oft times he’d laugh
     But still a tear
Crept thru his song,
     As he kept trudging
Along that weary road.

I saw a long white mist roll down
     And cover all the earth
(There wasn’t even a shadow
     To tell it was night).
And then there came an echo . . . .
 . . . . Footsteps of a dark boy
Still climbing on the way.

A song with its tear
     And then a prayer
From the lips of a dark boy
     Struggling thru the fog.
Oft times I’d hear
     The lashing of a whip
And then a voice would cry to heaven
     “Lord! . . . Lord!
     Have mercy! . . .  mercy!”
And still that bleeding body
     Pushed onward thru the fog .
Song . . .  Tears . . .  Blood . . .  Prayer
     Throbbing thru the mist.
The mist rolled by
     And the sun shone fair,
Fair and golden
     On a dark boy . . . . cold and still
High on a bare bleak tree
     His face upturned to heaven
His soul upraised in song
     “Peace. . . . Peace
     Rest in the Lord.”
Oft times in the twilight
     I can hear him still singing
As he walks in the heavens,
     A song without a tear
A prayer without a plea.
Lord, lift me up to the purple sky
     That lays its hand of stars
Tenderly on my bowed head
     As I kneel high on this barren hill.
My song holds naught but tears
     My prayer is but a plea
Lord take me to the clouds
     To sleep . . . to sleep.

(The Crisis, September 1928)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Earth

A mountain
Is earth’s mouth . . .
She thrusts her lovely
Sun painted lips
To the clouds . . . for heaven’s kiss.

A tree
Is earth’s soul . . .
She raises her verdant
Joyous prayer
To the slowly sinking sun
And to evening’s dew.
She flings her rugged defiance
To hell’s grumbling wrath
And deadly smile;
Then rustles her thanksgiving
To the dawn.

A river
Is earth’s tears . . .
Flowing from her deep brown bosom
To the horizon of
Oblivion . . .
O! Earth, why do you weep? 

(The Carolina Magazine, May 1928)

. . . . . . . . . .

Want

I want to take down with my hands
The silver stars
That grow in heaven’s dark blue meadows
And bury my face in them.

I want to wrap all around me
The silver shedding of the moon
To keep me warm.

I want to sell my soul
To the wind in a song
To keep me from crying in the night.

I want to wake and find
That I have slept the day away,
Only nights are kind now . . . 
With the stars . . . moons . . . winds and me . . . 

(The Crisis, November 1928)

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Categories: Poetry