in nature. In other poems from this collection, however, the tone, style and subject matter are not dissimilar to those found in poems published many years later as regards their concern for religious experience and the exploration of African myth and religion. In 1971, Wright's first full-length collection of poetry, The Homecoming Singer, was published by Corinth Press. This book included poems including "The Homecoming Singer", "The End of an Ethnic Dream", and "An Invitation to Madison County". In this book, Wright "attempts to bridge past and present and meditates on feelings of exclusion from society or personal identity using geographical settings as backdrops for the autobiographical persona’s spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth." The poem that opens the volume, "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting", has a narrator who is mostly detached from the scene described in the poem and then becomes ironically part of "the uncertain, inconclusive encounter between man and God in a Black church.". The poem suggests an ambiguous, questioning attitude towards traditional religion that is revealed in the congregants' Africanization of Christianity: "They have closed their night / with what certainty they could, / unwilling to change their freedom for a god." Critical reception of The Homecoming Singer was positive, and Wright was immediately recognized as a major voice. The New York Times hailed it as "a tense and memorable collection", in which Wright "is making his way among troubled alternatives", in search of an independent black voice. However, in contrast to Wright's later work, the themes of this book have been described as "conventional". While some critics argue for a change of direction in Wright's work after Death as History and The Homecoming Singer (and some parts of Soothsayers and Omens), others find instead continuity and unity in the poet's work. Darryl Pinckney has argued that Wright's earlier poetry is more closely aligned with "the rebellious mood of the Sixties", referring in particular to the poems "Death as History" and "A Plea for the Politic Man". In his review of the volume Selected Poems of Jay Wright, Robert B. Shaw also contrasts the earlier volumes with the poet's later work, saying that one may "accept (and enjoy)" the earlier poems "with fewer questions", in contrast to the esoteric difficulty and rigor of the later poems. Charles H. Rowell associates the poems in The Homecoming Singer and in the second section of Soothsayers and Omens with confessional poetry