 Poetry: November 13, 2013 Issue [#5995] |
  Poetry
This week: Jean Toomer Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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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.
On December 26, 1894 Nina Pinchback and Nathan Toomer welcomed their son, Nathan Eugene Pinchback Toomer, into the world. The couple split shortly after Toomer was born. Nina and Toomer lived with her parents in Washington. As a young boy Toomer attended all black school in Washington, until the time his mother remarried and they moved to New York. There he attended an all-white school. Before Toomer reached high school his mother passed away and he was sent back to live with his grandparents. Toomer graduated from M Street School. He then went on to dabble in higher education. 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. He 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, Toomer began to identify himself as an African American. Toomer published Cane in 1923. He was a coauthor of Problems of Civilization, published in 1929.
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. Both Toomer’s marriages were met with social criticism by being inter-racial. Toomer moved his family to Doylestown, Pennsylvania. While in Doylestown he began to with drawl from society. The Flavor of Man was published in 1949 and Toomer last publication was a poem Blue Meridian published in 1950. He turned his focus to serving the Quaker communities. He worked mostly with high schools in the area. Jean Toomer died on March 30, 1967 after several years of failing health.
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 sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
The Lost Dancer
by Jean Toomer
Spatial depths of being survive
The birth to death recurrences
Of feet dancing on earth of sand;
Vibrations of the dance survive
The sand; the sand, elect, survives
The dancer. He can find no source
Of magic adequate to bind
The sand upon his feet, his feet
Upon his dance, his dance upon
The diamond body of his being.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Do not despair the summer’s end;
the colored memories extend
through autumn’s rise ‘til winter’s sleep.
The tears of time, as seconds, weep
the passing as the seasons wend.
The cyclic chains of time portend
a rebirth as the seasons mend
together as the clock hands sweep.
Do not despair.
Train your eyes; horizon’s end
is not escape. It will transcend
the ashen past with colors deep,
pulsating as the hours creep
in a kaleidoscopic blend.
Do not despair.
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Good luck to all 
