Good News About the Earth is by a black poet, Lucille Clifton, whose urban world is a mini-Vietnam—a landscape of inner desolation. The book opens with a credo that sets the tone of a lyric poet confident of her own time and place. Referring to the Kent State tragedy: "… only to keep / his little fear / he kills his cities / and his trees / even his children oh / people / white ways are / the way of death / come into the / Black / and live."

I emphasize the word "lyric" in describing Ms. Clifton, for beneath her anger and the recounting of history is the saving (and soothing) grace of tenderness. love and hope spring like a scent from these pages. A simple religiosity abounds, not the cloying old-time religion or the frenetic Holy Rollerism. In "Palm Sunday," she moves from the divinity of a title to the image of man…. But...