any comprehensive study of his poems. Yet it is,
perhaps, through the lens of his poetry that we
are provided the most revealing commentaries on
Toomer as artist and philosopher.
Toomer’s poetry spans more than three dec-
ades and evolves in four distinct periods: the
Aesthetic Period (1919–August 1921), marked
by Imagism, improvisation, and experimenta-
tion; the Ancestral Consciousness Period (Sep-
tember 1921–1923), characterized by forms of
racial consciousness and Afro-American mysti-
cism; the Objective Consciousness Period (1924–
1939), defined by Gurdjieffian idealism and
‘‘being consciousness’’; and the Religious Period
(1940–1955), distinguished by Christian Existen-
tialism, owing to an espousal of Quaker religious
philosophy. His poetic canon, then, constitutes a
direct dramatization of consciousness, a verita-
ble phenomenology of the spirit.
Toomer’s career as a poet began long before
the publication ofCane. Between 1919 and 1921
he experimented with several forms of poetry,
including haiku, lyrical impressionism, and
‘‘sound poetry.’’ The major influences on his
artistic and philosophical development during
this period were Orientalism, French and Amer-
ican Symbolism, and Imagism. Orientalism
provided the basis for the idealist philosophy
evident in all stages of Toomer’s intellectual
development. As he describes it, ‘‘Buddhist phi-
losophy, the Eastern teachings, occultism, theo-
sophy.... These ideas challenged and stimulated
me. Despite my literary purpose, I was com-
pelled to know something more about them. So
for a long time I turned my back on literature
and plunged into this kind of reading. I read far
and wide, for more than eight months’’ (‘‘Outline
of an Autobiography’’ in Turner 119). In a spe-
cifically literary context, Orientalism was also
the basis for his fascination with Symbolism
and Imagism. Of the French Symbolists, his lit-
erary mentor was Charles Baudelaire, whoseLes
Petits Poemes en prose` inspired many of the
poems written during this period and later pro-
vided models for the prose poems and lyrical
sketches inCane. To an even greater degree,
Toomer was impressed by the poetry and aes-
thetics of the Imagists: ‘‘Their insistence on fresh
vision and on the perfect clean economical line
was just what I had been looking for. I began
feeling that I had in my hands the tools for my
own creation’’ (Turner 120).
The best examples of the Imagist poetry from
this period are ‘‘And Pass,’’ ‘‘Storm Ending,’’ ‘‘Her
Lips Are Copper Wire,’’ and ‘‘Five Vignettes.’’ A
sustained impressionisticportrait of twilight fading
into darkness, ‘‘And Pass’’images a picturesque sea
setting in two brief movements, each introduced
by ‘‘When.’’ The poem concludes in a moment of
visionary awareness, as the poet’s imagination is
suddenly arrested by the passing clouds, the fleet-
ing and majestic ‘‘proud shadows.’’ Concomitant
with the poet’s sense of exaltation comes a sense of
his own loneliness and mortality, as ‘‘night envel-
ops/empty seas/and fading dreamships.’’
Also richly impressionistic in design, ‘‘Storm
Ending’’ unfolds as an implied comparison
between two natural phenomena, thunder and
flowers, although imagery remains the crucial
vehicle of meaning:
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our
heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Ambling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears...
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.
This scene captures the momentous return
of sunshine and tranquility to nature following a
tempest, as the sound of thunder fades into the
distance.
In ‘‘Her Lips Are Copper Wire’’ desire gen-
erated by a kiss is compared to electrical energy
conducted between copper wires, here imaged as
lips. The evocative and sensuous opening lines,
addressed to an imaginary lover, well illustrate
Pound’s Doctrine of the Image:
Whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright heads on yellow globes...HIS POETIC CANON, THEN, CONSTITUTESA DIRECT DRAMATIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS,
A VERITABLE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT.’’
Storm Ending