Cane

“Seventh Street” opens with an epigraph about money, bootleggers, and fast cars. It sets the stage for the uniquely urban setting of this story: Washington, DC. The story does not have a clear narrative but is a series of exclamations, rhetorical questions, and random musings: “Wedges rust in soggy wood…Split it! In two! Again! Shred it!...the sun” (52). This chaotic chapter describes Seventh Street in DC as a “bastard of Prohibition and the War” (51). It is an African American area where jazz music and the bustle of urban life abound. The chapter itself has a sense of rhythm, made possible partly by repetition. At various points, Toomer repeats “Who set you flowing?” as a kind of refrain. This “flowing” references flowing blood, flowing liquor pre-Prohibition Era, and perhaps an overall worked-up mood of the chapter’s unspecified addressee. “Seventh Street” describes the coexistence of poverty and the upper-class: “in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets” (52). Toomer also plays with alliteration, using the “w” of Washington as a guide for naming other “w” words, such as “war” and “wedge.