David Allen 1/24/10 Per.

Toomer Poetry
Jean Toomer was an important poet from the Harlem Renaissance. Jeans work, like Langston Hughes, focused mainly on the oppression of the African-Americans. The two poems that I looked at are called Unsuspecting and Conversions. They both describe the cruelty towards the African-Americans in the 1920s. They share themes with both Countee Cullens and Arna Bontemps writing. Specifically, Cullens From The Dark Tower, and Bontemps A Black Man Talks of Reaping. All of these poems center around the black people revolting against their place in society and how they wont just sit and approve of how theyre being treated. In Unsuspecting its last line says, And never suspects it is a rind. This implies that the colored people have been waiting for their time to strike, and the whites never suspected it. In Conversion, it mentions an African Guardian of Souls that has grown blind to the colored peoples oppression. These common themes reoccur in countless poems written by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. These writers are, but are not limited to, Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, Jean Toomer, Alain Lock, James Baldwin, James Johnson, Nella Larsen, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston. The Harlem Renaissance provided a chance for these black writers to express their ideas. These great people opened the eyes of many previously unaware of the colored citizens situation.

Unsuspecting
from The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer
There is a natty kind of mind That slicks its thoughts, Culls its oughts, Trims its views, Prunes its trues, And never suspects it is a rind.

Conversion
African Guardian of Souls, Drunk with rum, Feasting on strange cassava, Yielding to new words and a weak palabra Of a white-faced sardonic god-Grins, cries Amen, Shouts hosanna. ~ Jean Toomer