Jean Toomer, Cane

poems—land has this consciousness, climate, dusk, a consciousness—the poems do a lot to create that

“And”—not building, but addition, depth and intensity in combination

On the heels of In Our Time, published a year after Cane

Third section shift in style

1. What is Cane showing us about women and their environments?—trope of women as landscape (irish lit), also violence in landscape,

Karintha: “mate with them” “interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon”

Architecture, portraits, second section

Women still, but men’s heads as well

Georgia/South still seeps up even if they live in the “north” “Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago"

Cane was a "swan song," a song of an end (spirituals, a folk-spirit is dying out because of the great migration), says Toomer.