Jean Toomer and the Prison-House of Thought: A Phenomenology of the Spirit

African American Review, Spring, 1996 by George Hutchinson

This book's main contribution, perhaps, is to introduce many relatively unknown (and mostly unpublished) texts and to reveal broad parallels with contemporary "high modernist" texts, while generally outlining the changing shape of Toomer's philosophical and religious positions. The book concludes with a very useful bibliography of Toomer's canon and of comment on his work (reliable through 1989, incomplete thereafter).

To end on a note of praise: We can be thankful to Robert B. Jones for giving us a broader view of Toomer's literary efforts, in this and in other books, some yet to appear.