I reassess Jean Toomer’s poetics after the publication of his first novel Cane (1923). Cane’s critical reception has impacted and limited our understanding of his poetry, and of his racial identification, from the late 1920s to 1940s, when Toomer sought inspiration from the Eastern mystic, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and later from the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Challenging the neat binary of Toomer’s lyrical and didactic strains in his later work, and spotlighting the complexity of his racial posturing, I argue that the central elements of Toomer’s poetics remained constant, particularly his attention to moral and spiritual enlightenment in order to address the pressing psychosocial and racial issues of his time.

中文翻译：

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甘蔗之后的让·图默

在让·图默的第一部小说《甘蔗》（1923 年）出版后，我重新评估了他的诗学。从 1920 年代后期到 1940 年代，图默从东方神秘主义者乔治·伊万诺维奇·葛吉夫以及后来的宗教友人协会或贵格会寻求灵感时，坎恩的批评性接受影响并限制了我们对他的诗歌和他的种族认同的理解. 在他后来的作品中挑战图默的抒情和说教风格的二元对立，并强调他种族姿态的复杂性，我认为图默诗学的核心要素保持不变，特别是他对道德和精神启蒙的关注，以解决紧迫的问题他那个时代的社会心理和种族问题。