Selected Poems

Jessie Redmon Fauset served as literary editor of The Crisis during one of the most fertile periods of Black American cultural life. These selected poems, spanning 1912 to 1929, capture a voice at once delicate and defiant, tender lyrics about love and longing sit alongside sharp observations about race, beauty, and belonging. Fauset refused the simple categories her era imposed on Black writers. Her verses explore what it means to be Black and female in America with nuance rather than polemic, finding dignity in everyday moments while never averting her gaze from the broader struggle. The collection traces her evolution from a young poet testing her voice to an established literary figure who balanced modernist innovation with classical restraint. These are poems that demand attention not for their volume but for their precision, their emotional depth, their quiet insistence that Black lives and Black love are worthy of lasting artistic monuments.