Arnold Adoff updates the classic collection I Am the Darker Brother: An Anthology of Modern Poems by African Americans, first published in 1968, with 23 new poems by Nikki Giovanni (who also contributes a foreword), Ishmael Reed, Maya Angelou and others. This anthology covers not only well-known poems by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay and Paul Laurence Dunbar, but fills in other bright spots in a strong and often neglected tradition. Illustrations, by Benny Andrews, not seen by PW.