A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Classics African American Literature 20th Century  1 min

Beehive

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

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."

Within this black hive to-night

There swarm a million bees;

Bees passing in and out the moon,

Bees escaping out the moon,

Bees returning through the moon,

Silver bees intently buzzing,

Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees

Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb,

And I, a drone,

Lying on my back,

Lipping honey,

Getting drunk with silver honey,

Wish that I might fly out past the moon

And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.

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"Beehive" is from Jean Toomer's novel Cane.