Sterling A. Brown

Sterling A. Brown was an American poet, critic, and professor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry is known for its use of African American folk traditions, blues, and vernacular speech. Biography ↓More ↓

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Sterling A. Brown

Return

I have gone back in boyish wonderment To things that I had foolishly put by.... Have found an alien and unknown content In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers, That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly. Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade, There I have lain while hours sauntered past-- I have found peacefulness somewhere at last, Have found a quiet needed for so long.

Sterling A. Brown

Challenge

I said, in drunken pride of youth and you That mischief-making Time would never dare Play his ill-humoured tricks upon us two, Strange and defiant lovers that we were. I said that even Death, Highwayman Death, Could never master lovers such as we, That even when his clutch had throttled breath, My hymns would float in praise, undauntedly. I did not think such words were bravado. Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear, Of Time or Death. We loved each other so. And thus, with you believing me, I made My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid.... And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear?

Biography

Sterling A. Brown was an American poet, critic, and university professor whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. He was born in 1901 and died in 1989, and he is associated with the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement. His poetry draws heavily on African American folk traditions, including blues, spirituals, and work songs, and he often used black vernacular speech in his verse. Themes in his work include the lives of rural and urban black Southerners, racial injustice, and the resilience of African American culture. His first collection, "Southern Road," was published in 1932 and is considered a landmark of African American literature. He also published critical essays on black literature and folklore, and he taught at Howard University for many years, influencing generations of writers and scholars. His later poetry, including the collection "The Last Ride of Wild Bill," continued to explore black folk heroes and oral traditions. Brown's work is significant for its pioneering use of dialect and folk forms in serious poetry, and for its contribution to the documentation of African American experience.

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