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Lewis Grandison Alexander was born on July 4th in the year 1900 in Washington D.C.

Though Alexander is known as a poet, he was also a costume designer, and a director of some plays.

He poured most of his creativity into poetry. He was best known as a poet in his time. Alexander began writing poetry when he was only seventeen years old. At that time, his speciality was Japenese forms.

Alexander's work was featured in many different magazines.He was a member of the Playwritters Circle of Washington D.C. In that group he directed many pagents. Alexander was an active participant among writers just like him

He was very devoted to his work. He loved what he did. He wrote many famous poems. One in particular is "Little Cinderella". This poem was featured in the failed magazine Fire!

He later published a second verse to this poem. Although the magazine failed, this poem was still popular. Lewis Grandison Alexander died after a successful, but not long, life. He did in the year 1945.

Although Alexander did not live in Harlem, he was an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance movement. His location outside of Harlem helped to spread the inventive new thinking that flourished at the time in New York. After writing extensively in Washington, Alexander moved around the country and joined whichever literary circle that existed in his new city. In Philadelphia, he was associated with a group of young writers who were commonly published in the small-time "Black Opals" literary magazine. In Boston he appeared in the "Saturday Evening Quill".

Alexander was influential at the University of North Carolina where he served as honorary editor for special issues of The Carolina Magazine, the official literary publication of the students of the University, which featured black poets and writers. With Alexander's help (he selected works from Crisis and Opportunity writing and poetry contest[clarification needed]), the magazine continued to publish Negro Poetry Numbers and Negro Play Numbers. The continued issues of Negro Poetry Numbers were dedicated to Alexander.

-He later continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Alexander expressed a special interest in Japanese forms and he is one of few Black American poets to write in these styles.

-Alexander went on to study at Howard University in Washington D.C. where he was an active member of the Howard Players, the school's theater group.

-He was educated in the Washington public school system.He began writing poetry; he took special interest in Japanese forms including haiku, hokku, and tanka.

Education and style

Lewis

Grandison

Hokku

I

Life goes by moving,

Up and down a chain of moods

Wanting what’s nothing.

II

My soul is the wind

Dashing down fields of Autumn:

O, too swift to sing.

III

I shall spend my moods

Like a rose discards leaves

And die without moods.

IV

My ears burn for speech

And you lie cold and silent.

Supinely cruel:

V

Look at the white moon

The sphinx does not question more.

Turn away your eyes.

VI

The poetry of life?

NO, the picture of my dreams

Flashing on my heart.

Lewis Grandison Alexander

Poetry

Lewis Grandison Alexander Poems >>

Africa

Thou art not dead, although the spoiler's hand

Lies heavy as death upon thee; though the wrath

Of its accursed might is in thy path

And has usurped they children of their land;

Though yet the scourges of a monstrous band

Roam on your ruined fields, your trampled lanes,

Your ravaged homes and desolated fanes;

Thou art not dead, but sleeping, - Motherland.

A mighty country, valorous and free,

Thou shalt outlive this terror and this pain;

Shall call thy scattered children back to thee,

Strong with the memory of their brother slain;

And rise from out thy charnel house to be

Thine own immortal, brilliant self again!

Contribution to the Harlem Renaissance

"(Harlem) is romantic in its own right. And it is hard and strong, its noise, heat, cold, cries and colours are so. And the nostalgia is violent too; the eternal radio seeping through everything day and night, indoors and out, becomes somehow the personification of restlessness, desire, brooding."

Jesús

Brunini.

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