Fischer teaches at the State University of New York, Buffalo. In the following excerpt from an article on Cane, the collection of prose and poetry in which "Blood-Burning Moon" appears, he analyzes the characters of Tom Burwell and Bob Stone and discusses the importance of music in Toomer's work.
A palpable man . . . does briefly cross Toomer's pages in the last rural piece [of Cane], "Blood-Burning Moon." I say briefly, because Tom Burwell, his manly strengths triumphant for a fleeting interval in which he successfully courts his woman and kills a challenging white suitor, is abruptly incinerated on a lynching pyre. Unlike his practice in the previous sketches, Toomer has not assigned a woman's name to the title, even though Louisa is one of the three principal figures in the story, because the experience.....
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