Clarissa Scott Delany

Clarissa Scott Delany was an African American poet born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1901. She attended Bradford Academy and Wellesley College, graduating in 1923, and pursued a career in teaching and social work. Delany was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, publishing poems in periodicals and anthologies of the 1920s. Her poetry frequently addresses themes of love, loss, and the passage of time, using traditional verse forms and a somber, reflective tone. Her poem "Solace" was collected in Countee Cullen's 1927 anthology Caroling Dusk, a key document of African American poetry. Delany died in 1927 at the age of twenty-six, and her surviving work consists of a small number of poems and essays. Because of her early death, her literary output was limited, but she is recognized as a participant in the Harlem Renaissance.