 Poetry: September 07, 2022 Issue [#11545] |
This week: Jean Toomer Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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Georgia Dusk
by Jean Toomer
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.
Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . .
Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars . .
O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sarcred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
Evening Song
by Jean Toomer
Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.
Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
Miracle made vesper-keeps,
Cloine sleeps,
And I'll be sleeping soon.
Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters whtere the moonwaves start,
Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
Cloine dreams,
Lips pressed against my heart.
On December 26, 1894 Nina Pinchback and Nathan Toomer welcomed their son, Nathan Eugene Pinchback Toomer, into the world. Nathan Toomer was born into slavery. He was a slave during the civil war. He took his owners sir name of Toomer when freed. Nina’s family were freed slaves before the Civil War. Both her parents were from mixed heritage. Nina was Nathan's third wife and was twenty years younger than him. The couple split shortly after Toomer was born. After the divorce Nina and Toomer lived with her parents in Washington. As a young boy Toomer attended an all black school in Washington, until the time his mother remarried and they moved to New York. There he attended an all-white school. Toomer’s mother passed away when Toomer was just fifteen and he was sent back to live with his grandparents. Toomer graduated from M Street School, a prestigious academic black school in the city. He then went on to dabble in higher education, studying at six different colleges. He studied all sorts of things, agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history but he eventually left school.
Toomer worked in a shipyard, before he moved himself into middle-class life. During this time Toomer worked on his writing and published several short stories and a few essays, in the New York Call. The more Toomer looked into his father’s past and the segregation in the Deep South, and his white heritage, he wanted to be identified only as American. He didn't want the labels people had put on him. Toomer started writing under the name Jean Toomer in 1919. He was known by this name for most of his adult life. In 1921 Toomer served as a principal down south. Toomer learned many things while living in the south, he started writing about his experiences and published "Georgia Night" in the socialist magazine The Liberator in New York. In 1923 he published Cane. He was a coauthor of Problems of Civilization, published in 1929. Several of his early writings were political.
In 1931 Toomer married the writer Margery Latimer. That following year he was widowed when his wife Margery died giving birth to their only daughter. Toomer named his daughter after her mother, Margery. Two years passed before he remarried for a second time to Marjorie Content, a New York photographer. Both Toomer’s marriages were met with social criticism by being inter-racial. Toomer moved his family to Doylestown, Pennsylvania and joined the Quakers. While in Doylestown he began to withdraw from society. From 1935 to 1940 Toomer wrote many pieces about the relationships between genders. The Flavor of Man was published in 1949 and Toomer's last publication was a poem Blue Meridian published in 1950. After 1950 Toomer no longer wrote stories or poetry to be publicly published. He only wrote them for himself from that point on. He turned his focus to serving the Quaker communities. Nathan “Jean” Toomer died on March 30, 1967 after several years of failing health.
November Cotton Flower
by Jean Toomer
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,
Failed in its function as the autumn rake;
Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
All water from the streams; dead birds were found
In wells a hundred feet below the ground--
Such was the season when the flower bloomed.
Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed
Significance. Superstition saw
Something it had never seen before:
Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
Beauty so sudden for that time of year.
Tell Me
by Jean Toomer
Tell me, dear beauty of the dusk,
When purple ribbons bind the hill,
Do dreams your secret wish fulfill,
Do prayers, like kernels from the husk
Come from your lips? Tell me if when
The mountains loom at night, giant shades
Of softer shadow, swift like blades
Of grass seeds come to flower. Then
Tell me if the night winds bend
Them towards me, if the Shenandoah
As it ripples past your shore,
Catches the soul of what you send.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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#2279187 by Not Available. |
When tides of frustration pour down the flue,
landslides of emotional trash ensue,
the scope of which suggests catastrophe,
unless we find a healing recipe,
as the seasons of life keep rolling through.
Conflicting agendas begin to brew
a vile concoction, until we eschew
destructive force and try to remedy
those tides of frustration.
More positive perspective will renew
ability to grasp that which is true
and weave the fabric of society
into stronger defense so we can see
how resilient human heart will subdue
the tides of frustration.
Honorable mention:
"Invalid Entry"
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