[Dear John, Dear Coltrane] is an uneven collection of poems—flat at times, but alive with a potentially strong voice at others. Strangely enough, it reminds one most frequently of the verse of Kenneth Rexroth—strangely, because Mr. Harper claims that his prosody grows rather out of jazz than out of traditional Western poetics, and because much of his work is given to what we are learning to call "the black theme." Whatever his ideological loyalties, however, Mr. Harper's is a poetry of classically unadorned statement, a direct, unflinching record of a man alive in his time. When he is at his best, in both his public and his private voice, he creates a language humming with emotion and ennobled by a deeply felt human dignity.

"Notes On Current Books: 'Dear John, Dear Coltrane'," in The Virginia Quarterly Review (copyright, 1970, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of...