Nikki Giovanni in [The Women and the Men offers an unfortunate example] of the dangers of success. [She is] self-consciously determined to speak as [a black woman of her] African past and of [her] present loves. [She fails] because the public voice drowns out the private emotion. In fairness, Nikki Giovanni retains in some of her new work the innocent clarity that marked her earlier poems. "Kidnap Poem" is a delight: "if I were a poet / I'd kidnap you…." And in "All I Gotta Do," one hears the authentic note of the blues. She sometimes shows an eye for detail, as in "Alabama Poem" when she describes an old woman with a corncob pipe knifing a bunion off her foot. But too often we are assaulted with generalities like: "'life is precious' is all we poets / wrapped in our loneliness are trying to say." (pp. 103-04)

James Finn...