"My Chosen World": Jean Toomer's Articles in The New York Call

CHARLES SCRUGGS "My Chosen World": Jean Toomer's Articles in The New York Call G?a? toomer published two books during his lifetime, Carre (1923), the work for which he is primarily known, and Essentials 1931), a privately-printed collection of aphorisms. In the past fifteen years three further books of his writings have appeared, much of it previously unpublished material: The Wayward and the Seeking (1980), The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer (1988), and The Jean Toomer Reader (1993).1 The earliest dated material in these collections is from 1922, though some of the poems may have been written in 1921, and the accepted date of Toomer's first publication is April 1922, when "Song of the Son" appeared in the Crisis. This poem would become the centerpiece of Cane's first section. Despite the sudden flurry of creative activity in 1922, Toomer had been an aspiring writer since at least 191 7 and the five years between his initial efforts and his first publication were an extended apprenticeship . When he first submitted his work to the Crisis in February 1922, its literary editor Jessie Fauset inquired of him, "Where did you get a chance to work out your technique? I know that didn't come in a moment . You must have studied and practiced to achieve it."2 We know that Toomer by this time had been reading Waldo Frank, Robert Frost, Eugene O'Neill, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, and perhaps even Ezra Pound, but it has long been assumed that if there were any pre-Cane writings, they were lost. Thus Nellie McKay in her critical Arizona Quarterly Volume 52, Number 2, Summer 1995 Copyright © 1995 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610 I04Charles Scruggs biography of Toomer says flatly that "Toomer's writings of the time between early 1919 and 1921 no longer exist. . . ."3 But at least three newspaper articles Toomer wrote in 1919 and 1920 do survive, "Ghouls," "Reflections on the Race Riots," and "Americans and Mary Austin," and their full texts are reprinted here following these introductory remarks. They appeared originally in the New York Call, one of the two or three most prominent socialist newspapers in the United States in 1920, and one of the few which was a daily paper. How Toomer came to wtite these pieces and to publish them in the Caíí remains unknown, though I will try to suggest at least a general historical context for them, drawing on the various versions of Toomer's preCane biography and other sources for the period.4 On October 21, 1920, the novelist and critic Waldo Frank wrote to Toomer. Both of them had attended a literary party held at Lola Ridge's New York apartment in the spring of that year, though they hadn't spoken to each other there. The week following, however, the two had a chance meeting in Central Park where they talked for the first time, discussing Toomer's hope to study music and his interest in writing. There were no further meetings, but when Ftank read the third and final article Toomer published in the Call (it appeared on October 10, 1920), he wrote to compliment him on the piece. That Call article was a critique of an essay which had appeared in the Nation on July 20, "New York: Dictator of American Criticism," written by Mary Austin and including a prominent attack on Frank's recently published book Our America (1919). Frank told Toomer he admired "your answer to Mary Austin. Your paper was a remarkably clear and keen piece of work. You are doubtless, by your own findings a musician, but you have a mind that does not show to disadvantage in writing either."5 Toomer probably replied to Frank, but there is no record of his answer . Their correspondence would evidently not be renewed until more than a year later, when Toomer wrote to Frank again, reminding him of their earlier exchange and requesting his opinion of some new material he had written during the intervening period. Much of this new material eventually found its way, in some form, into Cane, but Toomer would never reprint, indeed would scarcely mention, the...