The Poetic Utility of Language

In doing a close textual analysis of Toomer’s poem “Georgia Dusk”, I was struck immediately by the poem’s remarkable display of utility of language. I became increasingly aware of the consistently careful choice of words, and the level of attention the poet must certainly have paid to the seemingly minor language details of non-rhyming sounds in sentences and the mere spelling of words, all of which I will later explain in greater detail.
Although this masterful use of language became apparent to me through this piece, it first caught my eye while I was reading over the first lines of “Reapers”, another famous Toomer piece:
“Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes…” (1, 2)
Toomer’s powerful use of alliteration here reinforces the underlying tone of reapers’ blood-stained, slicing scythes. This prepared me as I then turned to “Georgia Dusk” to read with eyes aware and ready to notice any more of the poet’s other such subtle uses of language.
I began noticing instances of pleasurably poetic non-rhyming sounds, such as in line 2 of the first stanza, “…too indolent to hold”, and in the fourth stanza, “Sawdust pile…/Curls up…/Where only chips and stumps…/The solid proof…” The use of language thus creates a hidden fluidity of motion that the casual reader likely will not pick up.
Toomer also plays with similar spelling in his words, to a similar affect. In stanza 3 he toys around with words containing double ls.
“The sawmill blows its whistle…/And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill/Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill…”
I find this use of consonance terribly clever.
And further, in the sixth stanza once again he plays with spelling, using in quick succession
“…the pine trees are guitars/Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain…”
Notice once again the repetition of double letters in these words, here a nifty combination of consonance and assonance.
Although the clever play of sounds in this poem is not so noticeable in reading as the alliteration seen in “Reapers”, it certainly adds a similarly subtle sense of poetic flow to the greater rhythm of the piece.