A Black Man Talks of Reaping

Arna Bontemps wrote “A Black Man Talks of Reaping” in the 1920s, publishing it in Countee Cullen’s anthology Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (Harper & Row, 1927). Like Cullen, Bontemps was a part of the Harlem Renaissance, a prolific period of Black creativity that revolved around the predominantly Black neighborhood of Harlem in Manhattan, New York. Bontemps isn’t as well-known as some of the other literary figures connected to the Harlem Renaissance, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, yet he was a prolific writer. In addition to poetry, Bontemps published novels, short stories, plays, biographies, and children’s books. He edited several anthologies and frequently collaborated with Hughes, who was a close friend. At the time of Bontemps’s death, he was working on a biography of Hughes. Like Hughes, Bontemps’s work focuses on exploring Black lives and navigating racism. As an allegory, “A Black Man Talks of Reaping” uses an agricultural premise to address themes such as Racism and Exploitation, Specific Pressures on Black Men, and The Cycle of Precarity.

Content Warning: The guide features depictions of racism and death. In particular, it discusses anti-Black racism, racist violence, and enslavement.

Poet Biography

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and death. 

Arna Bontemps was born on October 13, 1902, in Louisiana. His mother, Maria, was a teacher, and his father, Paul, was a construction worker. In his biography of Bontemps, Renaissance Man From Louisiana (Greenwood Press, 1992), scholar Kirkland C. Jones says that the Bontemps ancestors were enslaved by a French family, leading to their French surname. Eventually, the Bontemps made it to Louisiana as free people. As a construction worker, Bontemps’s father traveled often. He and his wife were cultured and worldly, providing a relatively stable life for Bontemps and his siblings. However, the South’s vitriolic racism spurred the Bontemps to move to California, where there weren’t racist policies like segregation. 

Bontemps was close with his mother, who died from tuberculosis when he was 11. Growing up, Bontemps spent significant time at the Los Angeles Public Library, reading an array of authors, from William Shakespeare to Mark Twain. Paul wanted his son to become a doctor, but he supported Bontemps’s literary efforts. After graduating from California’s Pacific Union College, Bontemps moved to New York City and became a part of the Black artistic community known as the Harlem Renaissance. In 1924, he published his first poem, “Hope,” in Crisis—the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 

Through the writer Countee Cullen, Bontemps met Langston Hughes. Jones describes Bontemps and Hughes as “best friends.” They also worked together on several literary projects, including the children’s book Popo and Fifina (1932). Bontemps set aside his own autobiography to work on a biography of Hughes. By the time of Bontemps’s death, the Hughes biography remained unfinished. 

While in New York City, Bontemps taught at the Harlem Academy High School, where he met Alberta Johnson, a student. Bontemps and Johnson developed a romantic relationship, married, and had children. Bontemps taught at a variety of institutions, including Yale and Alabama’s Oakwood College. For years, he was the head librarian at Nashville’s Frisk University. 

Life in academia gave him ample time to write. In addition to poetry and children’s books, Bontemps wrote novels, short stories, and plays. He published biographies of Black icons like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. He also wrote a book covering Black people in sports, Famous Negro Athletes (1964), and he edited several anthologies. With Hughes, he edited The Poetry of the Negro: 1746-1949 (1949) and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958). 

Bontemps died on June 4, 1973, leaving behind a formidable literary oeuvre that cemented his legacy as a key figure in American literature. While Bontemps’s work isn’t as popular as the writings and poems by Hughes, his pieces regularly appear in anthologies, like his poem “A Black Man Talks of Reaping.” Bontemps felt that it was important for Black people to read about themselves and for white people to read about Black people. 

Poem Text

I have sown beside all waters in my day.

I planted deep within my heart the fear

That wind or fowl would take the grain away.

I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land

In rows from Canada to Mexico.

But for my reaping only what the hand

Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields

My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root,

Small wonder then my children glean in fields

They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

Bontemps, Arna. “A Black Man Talks of Reaping.” 1927. Poets.org.

Summary

As an allegory, the meaning of the poem lies in the analysis of the Black man and the disquieting results of his “reaping.” However, read straightforwardly, the poem is about the titular Black man, who documents his struggles with growing and cultivating food and crops. 

The Black man—the speaker—has been planting for a long time. He’s a careful sower, looking out for wind, predatory birds, and inclement years. He takes deliberate steps to protect his harvest, ensuring that his efforts are not wasted. Emphasizing his skill and experience, the man says that he’s planted enough seeds to fill the lands of other countries, like Mexico and Canada, yet the man hasn’t benefited from his prolific agricultural talents. The man doesn’t have anything he can keep: All he has is what he can hold in his hand at the time of the planting. 

The Black man’s farming connects to his family and his brother’s family. His brother’s sons collect what he has sown, as do his own children. They take in the results of his labor, but what they receive is not fulfilling. The crops and food that the progeny obtain don’t benefit them. The food only makes the young people angry and resentful. Rather than nourishment, they inherit dissatisfaction and hardship.