ANNIE ALLEN

A second volume of verse by the gifted Negro poet, author of A Street In Bronzeville. This book, in some respects, doesn't come up to the high standards of the first, it seems less technically competent and precise. But judging it on its merits alone, it is both refreshing and interesting. There's wonderful shimmering color and sensuousness. Without being rhetorical or flamboyant, it has a warm animal vitality which is like a cool drink in the Sahara of our contemporary white and nordic verse. Pulsing with the life she knows, with its own original music and images, there is a quality in this book that is genuine and young. In content the verses deal with three periods in a woman's life. There is a quality here long lacking in American poetry. Watch her.