At first sight, Cane seems to be a collection of poems, sketches, stories, and dramatic passages…. The loose structure of the book has induced many critics to discuss the pieces that fit into one of the accepted genres and forget about their function within the whole. In a few cases the tendency to separate Toomer's prose from his poetry led to evaluations of the comparative merits of each, which in turn encouraged discussions whether Toomer should better become a poet or a novelist. In this way, the impression of the work as a whole was ignored, and with it the particular effect that the blending of the different genres produced.
A close reading of Cane reveals that Toomer's contribution to Negro literature is the experiment. His concern for language, his interest in creating a new idiom, which would allow him to express the complexities and intricacies of the modern experience, linked him with the writers of the Lost Generation, but it also prevented him from merely imitating his contemporaries and allowed him to find his own original style. The same is true of the imagery of Cane. The influence of Sherwood Anderson and Waldo Frank is obvious. Yet, Toomer's inventiveness helped him to go beyond these in boldly creating new images which are powerful enough to support the structure of the book…. [His] imagery performs the function that the plot performs in a novel or a play: it connects the various incidents,… the poems, sketches, and episodes. In other words, the structural experiment of Cane consists in the organization of a series of emotions, situations, and actions by means of the 'inner form.' The blending of genres has the same result; in addition, it renders possible an experiment in point of view. This is obvious especially in the semi-dramatic passages of the second part. The characterization of Cane is dominated by a very sophisticated type of primitivism, which reveals the influence of Freud and makes Toomer one of the forerunners of the Harlem Renaissance. Finally, Cane is also an experiment in self-revelation, the expression of a quest for identity which does not shrink from facing the chaos at the bottom of the human soul. (pp. 38-9)
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