Although her volumes of poetry were published contemporaneously with many of those of the black arts movement poets of the 1960s, Pinkie Gordon Lane differs from them dramatically in style and content. However, she shares with them a general concern for black people across the country and at all levels of society. Her particular concern, though, centers upon the personal, private, quiet moments that have touched her as wife, mother, teacher, and editor. In many ways an occasional poet, she shares with her predecessor Phillis Wheatley the marking of sorrowful and happy events around her. Her poetry includes elegies, eulogies, comments on friends and family, reactions to teaching, tributes to fellow poets, and analyses of her personal growth as a woman and as a poet. Lane is a highly subjective and autobiographical poet whose work constitutes a transcript of the various dimensions of herself.

Representative of one of...