February 20, 2021

Calling Dreams

Georgia Douglas Johnson

The right to make my dreams come true,
I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 20, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Calling Dreams” originally appeared in the January 1920 issue of The Crisis.

Georgia Douglas Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the late nineteenth century. A member of the Harlem Renaissance, her poetry collections include Bronze: A Book of Verses (B.J. Brimmer Company, 1922) and The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1918). She died in 1966.

The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
(The Cornhill Company, 1918)

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Thanks to Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body (W. W. Norton, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A about Griffiths’ curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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"Calling Dreams" by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Calling Dreams

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

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