Toomer, Jean

Cane

The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer

This volume is the only collected edition of poems by Jean Toomer, the enigmatic American writer, Gurdjieffian guru, and Quaker convert who is perhaps best known for his 1923 lyrical narrative Cane. The fifty-five poems here—most of them previously unpublished—chart a fascinating evolution of artistic consciousness.

The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career. The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, Symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as "Five Vignettes," while "Georgia Dusk" and the newly discovered poem "Tell Me" come from Toomer' s Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s. "The Blue Meridian" and other Objective Consciousness poems reveal the influence of idealist philosopher Georges Gurdjieff. Among the works of this period the editor presents a group of local color poems picturing the landscape of the American Southwest, including "Imprint for Rio Grande." "It Is Everywhere," another newly discovered poem, celebrates America and democratic idealism. The Quaker religious philosophy of Toomer's final years is demonstrated in such Christian Existential works as "They Are Not Missed" and "To Gurdjieff Dying."

Robert Jones's clear and comprehensive introduction examines the major poems in this volume and serves as a guide through the stages of Toomer's evolution as an artist and thinker. The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer will prove essential to Toomer's admirers as well as to scholars and students of modern poetry, Afro-American literature, and American studies.

A Jean Toomer Reader: Selected Unpublished Writings

Jean Toomer achieved instant recognition as a critic and thinker in 1923 with the publication of his novel Cane, a harsh, eloquent vision of black American hardship and suffering. But because of his reclusive, introspective nature, Toomer's fame waned in later years, and today his other contributions to American thought and literature are all but forgotten. Now, this collection of unpublished writings restores a crucial dimension to our understanding of this important African American author. Thematically arranging letters, sketches, poems, autobiography, short stories, a play, and a children's story, Frederik Rusch offers insight into Toomer's mind and spirituality, his feelings on racial identity in America, and his attitudes toward and ideas about Cane. Rusch highlights Toomer's reflections on America, its people, landscape, and politics, reveals his significance for the problems and issues of today, and helps us understand Toomer not only as writer, but also as social critic, prophet, mystic, and idealist. Exploring Toomer's attempts to find self-realization and transcend social and cultural definitions of race, this book offers a unique view of the United States through the life of one of its most significant and fascinating intellectuals.

The Wayward and the Seeking: A Collection of Writings by Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer: Selected Essays and Literary Criticism

Essentials

A timeless collection of aphorisms by the acclaimed author of Cane, one of the most important books of the twentieth century, Essentials challenges us to consider our search for wholeness and connection with one another in an age of fragmentation, alienation, and exploitation. Destined to become a cult classic, it is inspired by Toomer's study under Gurdjieff and framed by a unique blending of Eastern spirituality and modern psychology. It includes reflections on topics ranging from the dangers of an industrial (and technological) age to the failure of modern religious and educational institutions. Above all, the brilliance set forth in Essentials affirms Toomer's position as America's true African American pioneering genius.

The Awakening / Cane / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (Package Edition)

The Uncollected Works of American Author Jean Toomer 1894-1967 (Studies in American Literature (Lewiston, N.Y.), V. 58.)