As a vision of America, "Images of Kin" could have been the epilogue to Hart Crane's masterpiece, "The Bridge"—were Crane alive today to see the country in less-than-glorious light. Michael Harper has been publishing his poetry since 1970, and by now it is more than obvious that he has been writing steadily on one theme. He is passionately identified with the history of his people. As it was for Crane, history is, for Mr. Harper, a personal matter, but he, as a black man, carries in him the burden of the past enslavement of his race and, unlike Crane, who wrote to celebrate this country, for Mr. Harper the problem is to relieve himself of his burden. It is the storm center of his poems and it has made for a writing that could not have come easily.

Like Crane, who also had his knotted passages, Mr. Harper...