A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Classics African American Literature 20th Century  1 min

Harvest Song

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer (1894 – 1967) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance and modernism. His reputation stems from his novel, Cane (1923), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as principal at a black school in Sparta, Georgia. Sociologist Charles S. Johnson called the novel "the most astonishingly brilliant beginning of any Negro writer of his generation." Toomer resisted being classified as a Negro writer, as he identified as "American."

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest- time. I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack'd fields of other harvesters. It would be good to see them... crook'd, split, and iron-ring'd handles of the scythes. It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger. (Dusk is a strange fear'd sh