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The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer

Online ISBN:
9781469616421
Print ISBN:
9780807842096
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer

Robert B. Jones (ed.),
Robert B. Jones
(ed.)
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Margot Toomer Latimer (ed.)
Margot Toomer Latimer
(ed.)
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Published:
31 March 1988
Online ISBN:
9781469616421
Print ISBN:
9780807842096
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

This volume is a 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 chart an 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 book 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.” The 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.

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