Gerald W. Barrax was one of many young black poets who raised their articulate voices during the 1960s. In 1970, his poems from that period appeared in a slim volume entitled Another Kind of Rain. A decade later, he published a second volume of verse, An Audience of One (1980). His artistic growth during that decade is worthy of note. Although both collections have similar themes and images, in the second volume Barrax speaks with a stronger imaginative voice, which is not nearly as derivative of other poets as that in his first volume. His poetic techniques, especially in Another Kind of Rain, are similar to those used by many of the other young black poets of the 1960s: free verse, irony, humor, typographical stylistics, metaphysical poetry, and diction teeming with "street talk" or "soul talk," often aimed at shocking the bourgeoisie, both black and white. Many of the poems...