Poem-a-Day is reader-supported. Your gift today will help the Academy of American Poets continue to publish the work of 260 poets each year, and share this series with 320,000 readers every day.

February 25, 2024

Sonnet

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.

I would not tarry if I could be gone
    Adown the path where calls my eager mind.
    That fate which knows naught but to grip and bind
Holds me within its grasp, a helpless pawn,
And checks my steps when I would travel on.
    Forever shall my body lag behind,
    And in this valley with the moaning wind
Must I abide with never a glimpse of dawn?

Though bends my body towards the yawning sod,
    I can endure the pain, the sorrows rife,
That hold me fast beneath their chastening rod,
    If from this turmoil and this endless strife,
Comes there a light to lead man nearer God,
    And guide his footsteps toward the Larger Life.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

“Sonnet” appears in Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.’s poetry collection The Band of Gideon, published in 1918. Seamon Cotter Jr. is noted as one of the early African American sonneteers, and in “Sonnet vs. Sonnet: The Fourteen Lines in African American Poetry,” professor of literature Antonella Francini analyzes the employed use of the sonnet and affirms, “[W]hen the African American sonnet began to acquire distinctive characteristics in the hands of some of the Harlem Renaissance poets, it was conceived as ‘an invitation to converse,’ a space from which a single voice launched an appeal to an implied audience in the attempt to elicit a reply or a reaction. Much like its medieval archetype, it appears to be a vehicle of communication rather than a mere display of a poet’s technical skills or a conventional replica of European aesthetic manners, as were the majority of sonnets produced in the nineteenth century in America.”

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. was born on September 2, 1895, in Louisville, Kentucky. The author of The Band of Gideon (Cornhill Publishing Company, 1918), he worked as an editor and writer for the Louisville Leader. He died on February 3, 1919.

The Band of Gideon
(Cornhill Publishing Company, 1918)

“Serenity” by Charles Bertram Johnson
read more

“It Was Not Fate” by William Moore
read more

Thanks to Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Jeffers’s curatorial approach and find out more about our Guest Editors for the year.

“Poem-a-Day is brilliant because it makes space in the everyday racket for something as meaningful as a poem.” —Tracy K. Smith

If this series is meaningful to you, join the community of Poem-a-Day supporters by making a gift today. Now serving more than 320,000 daily subscribers, this publication is only possible thanks to the contributions of readers like you.

donate

Our mailing address is:

The Academy of American Poets

75 Maiden Lane

STE #901

New York, NY 10038

Add us to your address book

View this email in your browser

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from all Academy messages.

For any other questions, please visit the Poem-a-Day FAQ page.

Poem-a-Day - "Sonnet" by Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.

Sonnet

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

Older messages

"The Black Man’s Bit" by Leslie Pinckney Hill

"Wild Beauty" by jessica Care moore

"oriño ka-n-an manbo emalé" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

"How would you have us, as we are?"

From "Tempest" by Roberto Carlos Garcia

You Might Also Like

Inside Facebook’s Free-Sperm Economy

Welcome to the chainification of America

New from Tim — "A Strategic Deep Dive on TikTok, The Boiling Moat of Taiwan, and China’s Next-Gen Statecraft"

The Opposite Of Small Town Blues

Starting May 22: Sophus Helle on Gilgamesh

I learned the difference between a delta squeeze and a gamma squeeze

"When The World Falls in Around You or, Vows to My Palestinian Wife on Our Wedding Day" by Lehua Taitano

Let’s end the technopoly

Dakota Johnson's Airport Pants Are The Best Alternative To Sweats

How to Create a Portable PC on a USB Drive