POETRY | Jessie Redmon Fauset and the Memory of September

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There is something about September that makes memory feel closer.

In Jessie Redmon Fauset’s “Again it is September,” the return of the month becomes an unexpected confrontation with love, longing and the promises we once believed we could carry forever. Golden weather surrounds the speaker, yet its beauty cannot protect her from remembrance. September becomes both setting and witness, returning unchanged while the person experiencing it has been transformed.

First published in the September 1917 issue of The Crisis, Fauset’s poem is remarkably brief, but it captures something painfully familiar: the way a season, a particular quality of light or even the return of a month can resurrect a version of ourselves we thought had disappeared.

Again it is September

Again it is September!
It seems so strange that I who made no vows
Should sit here desolate this golden weather
And wistfully remember—

A sigh of deepest yearning,
A glowing look and words that knew no bounds,
A swift response, an instant glad surrender
To kisses wild and burning!

Ay me!
Again it is September!
It seems so strange that I who kept those vows
Should sit here lone, and spent, and mutely praying
That I may not remember!

About Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961) was an American novelist, poet, essayist and editor whose literary work played an important role in the Harlem Renaissance. She is particularly remembered for her tenure as literary editor of The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP, where she helped foster and publish Black literary voices during one of the most significant periods of Black American cultural production.

Her own writing explored subjects including Black identity, womanhood, love, class and the complexities of social life in early twentieth-century America. Alongside her poetry and essays, Fauset published four novels and became an important figure in the development of Harlem Renaissance literature.

“Again it is September” originally appeared in the September 1917 issue of The Crisis.

Source & Credit

“Again it is September” by Jessie Redmon Fauset is in the public domain.

The poem was republished as part of Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets on September 5, 2020.

Original publication: The Crisis, September 1917
Poet: Jessie Redmon Fauset
Source: Academy of American Poets | “Again it is September”