[The poems in Dancing show how] the modern idiom may be adapted powerfully to express and convey the black experience in this country…. Wherever he is, Young keeps a sharp eye on the life of the rootless populations now stirring in their discontents…. The power of Young's poetry comes from his refusal to allow himself in any way to be segregated from this world. He is bold, he is blunt, but above all he is full of affection for the past and hope for the future…. [Silence] lies in the depth of his own memory and imagination, from which he draws some moments of rage against injustice, but very few of them compared with the depth of his affection for life and his sense of an individual role within a larger human drama…. "Birthday Poem" will make plainer than any other in the book his use of the...