The fiery passion and epigrammatic terseness with which Loretta Burns re-enacts her experiences and observations as an African American woman in contemporary America reveal her as a poet of life who transcends the labels African American, feminist, and/or womanist. Her poetry captures moments and scenes of living that echo her impressions and intuitions of a world trapped between appearance and reality, illusion and disillusion, expectation and realization, the material and the spiritual. Through her deceptive simplicity of diction, she explores the nooks and crannies of her psyche as well as |