Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27 June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, and died there on 9 February 1906, only thirty-three years later. In that brief life he became one of the most accomplished and consequential American writers of his generation: a poet of extraordinary musical discipline, a novelist and short-story writer, a public reader, a lyricist, and, in many ways, the first African American author to achieve a broad…
“It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
On December 26, 1894, in Washington, D.C., Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born into a world of racial complexity that would profoundly shape his literary vision and personal identity. Known to history as Jean Toomer, this enigmatic figure would produce one of the most celebrated works of the Harlem Renaissance before retreating into relative obscurity, leaving behind a legacy as puzzling as it is profound. His life stor…
“I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Modernist Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Sorrow
