[Al Young's Geography of the Near Past contains] soft, often beautiful reveries—about his wife, his child, his friends. But there are also bleaker poems about dashed hopes, a vanished past, wasted friends. These darker poems have a welcome tension, a kind of toughness that is new to his work.

In the final section of Geography of the Near Past, Young displays yet another unfamiliar poetic style. He reveals his imaginary alter ego, the black-militant poet O. O. Gabugah…. Ever his own man, Young writing as Gabugah affectionately mocks the pretense and phoniness of some of his militant brothers.

Sitting Pretty is a comic novel, a kind of picaresque tale without the expected ending. Sidney J. Prettymon, known to all as Sitting Pretty or Sit, is a middle-aged black man with a lot on his mind…. Sitting Pretty tells his story in his own words, and he can...