Ridin’ The Moon In Texas

Shange attempts to create a “verbal dialogue” with the works of various visual artists. Her dialogue is, she says in “Night Lightning,” a “conversation that goes on all night long. . . . ” She speaks to the works as she would “to a friend over coffee or champagne.” While using the visual arts as a take-off point for writing is certainly not a new idea, Shange brings to these poems and prose pieces her unique style and way of seeing. Often what she sees seems to have more to do with her own sensibilities than it does with the visual illustrations that accompany the writingbut that writing is lively, sensuous, and, finally, interesting in its own right. 
—Library Journal