Use of Imagery in Jean Toomer's Cane Essay

Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".

Toomer’s poems enhanced the moods of wistful and mournful pastoralism that pervades the book. His poems provide transitioning from one narrative to another, incorporating myths and symbols.

Spaulding begins her essay with a detailed personal testimony that describes the deep emotional connection she feels for darkness. In part of the second paragraph she states, “the sky and shore and water were all one inky darkness though stars sparkled on the watery surface,” (83). This description of the

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

In Emily Dickenson’s “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” distinct views of hesitation in life are explained, and are manifested with each authors different point of views, structure, sound, imagery, and metaphors.

“Slavery in the south was brutal as anybody could imagine” an idea expressed by Jean Toomer through his poem called “November Cotton Flower”. The poem is fourteen lines of rhyming verse describing the harsh, sudden and questionable bloom of a cotton flower in the month of November. It is composed of heroic couplets, with a regular rhyme scheme, which is as follows: A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, E, F, G, H, H, but the poem reads like Shakespearian sonnet - three quatrains developing a certain tone and theme, followed by a couplet that undercuts or reverses them. In the beginning it portrays the scuffle for survival of cotton flower during November’s harsh winter weather; but towards the end, it describes the sudden bloom of it. The author goes in depth with most of the descriptions to give a reader a clear and strong mental image.

The two poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Acquainted with the Night” written by Robert Frost are very similar to each other because of the simplistic form of language used and the uses of metaphors. When we first read the poem, it looks like an ordinary poem but once we go in depth and understand the meaning, it becomes so much more. Both of the poem has a very dark, gloomy and lonely setting with a really mysterious tone. There are different metaphors used in each poem to symbolize death; “Sleep” in “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Night” in “Acquainted with the Night.” The characters in the two poem are both in a journey and has come

In Emily Dickenson's "We Grow Accustomed to the Dark," and in Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," the poets use imagery of darkness. The two poems share much in common in terms of structure, theme, imagery, and motif. Both poems are five stanzas long: brief and poignant. The central concepts of being "accustomed" to something, and being "acquainted" with something convey a sense of familiarity. However, there are core differences in the ways Dickenson and Frost craft their poems. Although both Dickenson and Frost write about darkness, they do so with different points of view, imagery, and structure.

The twilight time is, “that space between here and there, between earth and eternity when we begin to more there than here.” “It is time to ask ourselves what legacy we are leaving behind.” It is a time, “When the concerns of this world fade away and we begin to be concentrated somewhere else.” It is when, “We begin to understand things we never even contemplated before, like the meaning of time, the preeminence of beauty, the power of the touch of a hand.” It is a time where “We are finished now, except for the finishing.” And “Now the mystery is about to reveal itself. Now the time is complete. Now it is finished. Now it is only beginning.” The way Chittister portrays her ideas of twilight time takes me to the scene of several movies or TV shows of when a loved one is in the hospital about to leave behind their legacy while friends and family are gathered at their side. This ultimately is a good visual portrayal of how one on the verge of death may spend their twilight

T.S Eliot’s poem, “The winter evening settles down” is a short, simple to read poem with several different examples of imagery. Eliot uses descriptive words, for instance, “withered leaves”, “broken blinds”, and “lonely cab-horse” (lines 7-10). He paints an extremely bleak image of a town that seems to be deserted of people. The tone of the poem plays hand-in-hand with the imagery used. This town is an unpleasant place where it has seemed to be neglected for some years now. Eliot’s use of imagery takes the reader to this deserted, torpid place; however, at the same time, his goal is to bring the life back into this grim town.

The arguments Bernard Bell makes in his article “A Key to the Poems in Cane” about Jean Toomer’s “Cane” that are intriguing and make a lot of sense if you think about them well enough. One of the first arguments that “Cane” is split into three to go along with his spiral believes. It is well-known that Toomer was a follower of Waldo Frank, who was a follower of George Gurdjieff, and believed that everyone is composed of their body, emotions, and intelligence. His article is compelling enough with that thought alone, but he also goes into explaining the meanings of some of Toomer’s poems like “Song of a Son” and “Reapers.” He gives insight to the poems that I had not considered, which gives me a whole new way to read them.

In Cane by Jean Toomer, the novel has a unique set up in which before and after each short story in the first and second sections, there’s a poem that has a relationship with the short story. The third portion of the novel however, is written in more of a traditional writing style for a novel. Before each section of the book there’s a blank page with a single arch on it, the first arch facing the upper left corner of the page, the second facing straight up to the top of the pag and the third, almost forming a circle. The two arch’s depicted before the final section of the book come close together but do not touch. The emptiness in the circle’s formation may take into account that throughout history, in the lives of African American citizens, there’s always something missing. Toomer’s novel brings about themes of imagery and how people were treated in the Jim Crow south of that time period.

Her choice of words, such as dark, night, evenings, moon, star, and midnight, are all related to the nighttime. This and the constant repetition-of “darkness” and “dark” especially-bring the reader’s attention to the central theme of darkness in the poem. Darkness is often used as a metaphor for one’s struggles, which is a connection the reader can make due to poem’s use of priming. Dickinson structures her poem in short choppy sentences, possibly representing the small steps people take further into the darkness. She also capitalizes the first letter in words such as road, life, and dark; perhaps this suggests the significance of those words in particular.

In the story "The Dead" James Joyce gives his protagonist, Gabriel, a characterization through imagery and symbolism. He brings Gabriel into the perspective where the reader can understand him better through techniques and devices.

Toomer’s placement and choice of imagery is crucial in establishing what he wants the audience to see; if he had used different imagery, his poem would not be interpreted in the same way. For example, the first line of his poem states, “Hair -- braided chestnut” (Toomer 1). By describing hair as “braided chestnut”, rather than simply saying “brown”, the