Background
Pearson was born on September 13, 1879 in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. He was born in a log cabin on his parent's farm. According to Pearson in his book My Fingers and My Toes, his first attempt at poetry came when he was about four years old: "One cold winter day my father had me out with him and asked me, "Jimmy, are you cold?" Without taking any time to study out my answer, it came like a flash: "My fingers and my toes, my feet and my hands, are jist as cold, as you'd ever see a man's." From this point, Larkin wrote, he wanted to be a poet. He was a poor student in school and wrote that he "was set down as a hopeless case...quit school entirely at 16, having never been in school more than 12 months, from first to last." However, he continued to educate himself, even when he was plowing on the family farm: "I always carried my notebook and my pencil with me, and as I trudged between the plow-handles in the hot sunshine, my mind was busy working out a poem." Pearson worked on the family farm until he was 21.
Read more about this topic: James Larkin Pearson
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