Jean Toomer Poet during Harlem Renaissance

5 Interesting Life Facts Jean Toomer lived for 73 years (1894-1967) Each of his maternal grandparents were born of a Caucasian father. But a "speck of Black makes you Black." Jean’s mother Nina Toomer named Jean, Nathan Eugene. Moved to New York in 1906 with his mother and her new husband. Graduated in 1914 and sought to live as an American.

Accomplishments- Poems He Wrote November Cotton Flower People A Certain Man Her Lips Are Copper Wire Harvest Song The Lost Dancer Reapers Song of the Son Cotton Song Tell Me Georgia Dusk Conversion Unsuspecting Evening Song A Portrait in Georgia Portrait in Georgia The M.W. *Also wrote books like: Wayward and Seeking

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: The second cannot exist without conscience. Therefore he, who has enough conscience To be disturbed but not enough to be Compelled, can neither reject the one Nor follow the other... -Jean Toomer

People To those fixed on white, White is white, To those fixed on black, It is the same, And red is red, Yellow, yellow- Surely there are such sights In the many colored world, Or in the mind. The strange thing is that These people never see themselves Or you, or me. Are they not in their minds? Are we not in the world? This is a curious blindness For those that are color blind. What queer beliefs That men who believe in sights Disbelieve in seers. O people, if you but used Your other eyes You would see beings Jean Toomer

For M.W. There is no transcience of twilight in The beauty of your soft dusk-dimpled face, No flicker of a slender flame in space, In crucibles, fragility crystalline. There is no fragrance of the jessamine About you, no pathos of some old place At dusk, that crumbles like moth-eater lace Beneath the touch. Nor has there ever been. Your love is like the folk-song's flaming rise In cane-lipped southern people, like their soul Which burst its bondage in a bold travail; Your voice is like them singing, soft and wise, Your face, sweetly effulgent of the whole, Inviolate of ways that would feile. Jean Toomer

Influences Jean Toomer, as a boy was forced to change his name from Nathan Eugene. Also forced to live with his father (who made him change his name) until his father died. His father died while he was very young, leaving him with out a family. Jean went to high school and later college for literature. Toomer loved writing at a young age, always writing about his dad and his hard life, alone.

Influential People Amanda America Dickson (1849-1893)

About Amanda Dickson Amanda America Dickson was born enslaved. She became one of the wealthiest African Americans in the 19th century. Amanda Dickson’s life revolved around her family who she cared very much for. Amanda Dickson had a hard life, growing up through segregation, and the Jim Crow laws. This influence Jean Toomer to write about her, in his poems and books.

Goals Jean Toomer wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write about his hard life, about being alone, raised with no dad. Jean wanted to graduate high school and go to college for literature. Jean wanted to write poems and books his whole life, and he did.

Reapers Reapers is a poems written by Jean Toomer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsslXvik7YE&feature=related This poem talks about his pain, and his pain for others, how he knows its coming.

Works Cited http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Multimedia.jsp?id=m-1702 Pictures http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/toomer/toomerbio.html Information