A very small collection of African poems that are not so much poems as chants or charms--reassurances from mother to child, ""good advice,"" laments of hunger and prayers for rain. Among the advice is a warning that ""To become a chief's favorite/ Is not always comfortable;/ It is like making friends/ With a hippopotamus;"" also a quick cure for laziness, a longer Invocation of truthfulness. The eternal Verities take on a slightly different cast, which is the chief value of this assemblage of traditional, material by the Chairman of the Council of African Studies at Yale; also its good looks--it is attractively designed and strongly illustrated by a Nigerian artist. Teachers should be particularly receptive.