Storm Ending

“Storm Ending” is a free-verse poem with nine lines of varying lengths. It can be classified as a pastoral poem (a poem celebrating retreating into an idyllic natural setting). Lucinda H. MacKethan’s article “Jean Toomer’s Cane: A Pastoral Problem” argues that Cane’s “pastoral design [...] provides a certain measure of stability for the complex and often contradictory urges reflected in Toomer’s work as he confronts the world that he, as both black man and modern man, must negotiate” (Cane. 1988. Norton Critical Edition). The pastoral form of poetry, which dates to ancient Greece and was popular in the English Renaissance, is re-envisioned by Toomer’s 20th-century verse.

Additionally, “Storm Ending” has qualities from the Imagist literary movement. Imagism was founded a few years before Toomer began working on Cane. Ezra Pound, inspired by classic Chinese poets such as Li Bai, published his aesthetic vision for this form in 1913. Pound described Imagism as focusing on presenting an image in conversational diction rather than with a strict meter or formal language. Turner’s introduction to Cane notes that Toomer’s “poetry and prose depend on the clean, impressionist phrasings of the Imagists” (Cane).