[Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment] is a record of a time and an involvement and awareness and activism which marks the late Sixties as special. Nikki Giovanni is a special poet for this special time—a revolutionary one…. She records [the spirit of time and place] in a special way evoking images largely through cataloguing. Black feelings, talk, judgments taking pains to particularize details; through her black magic, she conjures up visions and spirit of time, although she seems to remain estranged from the true essence and spirit of the folk, "Seduction" is a fine poem in Part I which juxtaposes the rap and the real, so that she comes very close to the truth about the matter, as she undresses the brother in what he suspects to be a counterrevolutionary fashion. (p. 102)

It is in the section, "Black Judgment," where you find the poet coming into...