Jean Toomer
Who is Jean Toomer
Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toomer; December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, though he actively resisted the association, and with modernism. His reputation stems from his novel Cane (1923), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta, Georgia. The novel intertwines the stories of six women and includes an apparently autobiographical thread; sociologist Charles S. Johnson called it "the most astonishingly brilliant beginning of any Negro writer of his generation". He resisted being classified as a Negro writer, as he identified as "American". For more than a decade Toomer was an influential follower and representative of the pioneering spiritual tea...
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Jean Toomer Poems
- Banking Coal
Whoever it was who brought the first wood and coal
To start the Fire, did his part well;
Not all wood takes to fire from a match,
Nor coal from wood before itâ??s burned to charcoal.
...
- November Cotton Flower
Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
...
- Cotton Song
Come, brother, come. Lets lift it;
come now, hewit! roll away!
Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day
But lets not wait for it.
...
- A Certain Man
A certain man wishes to be a prince
Of this earth; he also wants to be
A saint and master of the being-world.
Conscience cannot exist in the first:
...
- A Poem From Transatlantic
Stretch sea
Stretch away sea and land
We are following thee
Thy lead is dangerous
...
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Jean Toomer Quotes
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Comments about Jean Toomer
- Schweben_weben: drawing of jean toomer by winold reiss, c. 1925
(which reminds me i need to read toomer’s cane)
- Ifinestquotes: "we start with gifts. merit comes from what we make of them." jean toomer
- Sharetw_: "we start with gifts. merit comes from what we make of them." jean toomer
- Inspired2share: "we start with gifts. merit comes from what we make of them." jean toomer
- Yosuke_j: men try to run life according to their wishes; life runs itself according to necessity. by jean toomer
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