[In Masks Edward Brathwaite] has been able to invent a hybrid prosody which, combining jazz/folk rhythms with English-speaking meters, captures the authenticity of primitive African rituals in a way that the translations of the Trask anthology are rarely able to do. The author is totally immersed both in the expressive resources of the English tongue and in the firsthand spiritual dynamics of primitive living—a rare combination of proficiencies with lucky dividends for contemporary readers. Brathwaite's success in this long verse-quartet is advanced by his skill in assimilating without strain numerous proper nouns and idioms of the Ghanian vernacular into the poem's fluid English base…. Masks demonstrates that the primitive impulse must be filtered through the linguistic tactility of a single totally operative artistic intelligence, a consciousness fully in touch with our moment, if it is to become experiencable to us as readers. (pp. 56-7)

Laurence Lieberman...