CONTENTS

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>PAGE</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>FOREWORD, by Waldo Frank</td><td>vii</td></tr><tr><td>KARINTHA</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>REAPERS</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>BECKY</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>FACE</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>COTTON SONG</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>CARMA</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>SONG OF THE SON</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>GEORGIA DUSK</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>FERN</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>NULLO</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>EVENING SONG</td><td>34</td></tr><tr><td>ESTHER</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>CONVERSION</td><td>48</td></tr><tr><td>PORTRAIT IN GEORGIA</td><td>49</td></tr><tr><td>BLOOD-BURNING MOON</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>SEVENTH STREET</td><td>71</td></tr><tr><td>RHOBERT</td><td>73</td></tr><tr><td>AVEY</td><td>76</td></tr><tr><td>BEEHIVE</td><td>89</td></tr><tr><td>STORM ENDING</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>THEATER</td><td>91</td></tr><tr><td>HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE</td><td>101</td></tr><tr><td>CALLING JESUS</td><td>102</td></tr><tr><td>BOX SEAT</td><td>104</td></tr><tr><td>PRAYER</td><td>131</td></tr><tr><td>HARVEST SONG</td><td>132</td></tr><tr><td>BONA AND PAUL</td><td>134</td></tr><tr><td>KABNIS</td><td>157</td></tr></tbody></table>

FOREWORD

READING this book, I had the vision of a land, heretofore sunk in the mists of muteness, suddenly rising up into the eminence of song. Innumerable books have been written about the South; some good books have been written in the South. This book is the South. I do not mean that Cane covers the South or is the South's full voice. Merely this: a poet has arisen among our American youth who has known how to turn the essences and materials of his Southland into the essences and materials of literature. A poet has arisen in that land who writes, not as a Southerner, not as a rebel against Southerners, not as a Negro, not as apologist or priest or critic: who writes as a poet. The fashioning of beauty is ever foremost in his inspiration: not forcedly but simply, and because these ultimate aspects of his world are to him more real than all its specific problems. He has made songs and lovely stories of his land . . . not of its yesterday, but of its immediate life. And that has been enough.

How rare this is will be clear to those who

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FOREWORD

have followed with concern the struggle of the
South toward literary expression, and the par-
ticular trial of that portion of its folk whose skin
is dark. The gifted Negro has been so often
thwarted from becoming a poet because his
world was forever forcing him to recollect that
he was a Negro. The artist must lose such
lesser identities in the great well of life. The
English poet is not forever protesting and recall-
ing that he is English. It is so natural and easy
for him to be English that he can sing as a man.
The French novelist is not forever noting: "This
is French." It is so atmospheric for him to be
French, that he can devote himself to saying:
"This is human." This is an imperative con-
dition for the creating of deep art. The whole
will and mind of the creator must go below the
surfaces of race. And this has been an almost
impossible condition for the American Negro to
achieve, forced every moment of his life into a
specific and superficial plane of consciousness.

The first negative significance of *Cane* is that
this so natural and restrictive state of mind is
completely lacking. For Toomer, the Southland
is not a problem to be solved; it is a field of love-

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