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 described is essentially Tom Burwell's, and the force of his living—and dying...