Her poetry is a volatile mixture of major trends in both the art and the politics of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She is a social revolutionary, passionately interested in the plight of downtrodden people everywhere, and she is a seeker of African roots and bases of morality who uses the techniques of free verse, borrowing artistic concepts from surrealism. Hers is a prophetic voice that uses jazz rhythms and relates existentialist philosophy. Her insistence on discovering the origins of African moral concepts and her use of a voice that has the overtones of Old Testament prophecy indicate that she is also very much aware of the uses of the past.