On wings made of gauze

This first collection by a young black poet takes both technical and emotional risks, making for exciting and pleasurable reading. Most of the poems are built with loose and swinging lines, roomy and graceful. If Knight, Harper, and Baraka are the hard poets of bebop, then Finney is a poet of a cooler jazz: laid back yet hot, melodic yet tense, searching. Her subject is family, natural and extended: ``each time i sign my name/ know that it is for a thousand like you/ who could not hold a pen/ but who instead held me . . . .'' Finney is seeking her place, but she has found her power in a strong voice and her claim to its authority.