<DIV><p><I>You are born and it is to a black life<BR>Full of abuse and strange things . . .</I></p><p>In her brazen second collection, Dorothea Lasky cries out beyond prophecy and confession, through to an even more powerful empathy. On the verge of becoming pure substance and sensation, <I>Black Life</I> is emotion recollected not in tranquility, but in radically affirming intensity.</p><p><I>I leave and I am a black life . . .<BR>And I want to<BR>Be what you made me to be</I></p><p><B>Dorothea Lasky</B> is the author of two collections of poetry. Educated at the University of Massachusetts, Washington University, and Harvard University, she currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.</p></DIV>