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."

Hair—

silver-gray,

like streams of stars,

Brows—

recurved canoes

quivered by the ripples blown by pain,

Her eyes—

mist of tears

condensing on the flesh below

And her channeled muscles

are cluster grapes of sorrow

purple in the evening sun

nearly ripe for worms.

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"Face" is from Jean Toomer's novel, Cane.