Beckonings exemplifies Brooks' movement toward her new style, which is characterized by a struggle between her normal tendency to make each word bear its full measure of weight and suggestion and an insistence upon directness and simplicity of diction. Actually, despite her reputation for complexity, there are already many poems across the body of her work which are simple and direct. A Street in Bronzeville contains a large number of simple poems, some of which become favorites with readers. I would suppose the main difficulties for the uninitiated readers in some earlier poems would be the presence of irony and understatement.

Beckonings reduces the element of irony and often goes into direct statement. The poem in memory of her brother Raymond Brooks maintains directness, but in its second verse deliberately slows us into thoughtfulness, although no unusual words occur.

     He knew how to put paint to paper—
     made the paper speak and sing.
     But he was chiefly a painter of days and the daily,
     with a talent for life color, life pattern;
     a talent for jeweling use and the unusual,
     a talent for practical style.

A difference in style can be seen by comparing the above poem with the poem memorializing her father, which has direct, restrained statements, but insists upon more subtlety.

"The Boy Died in My Alley," a poem about conscience and the value of life, uses similar principles for simplicity, moving from lines which may be read rapidly to those which remain simple but slow you down for thought: "I never saw his face at all. I never saw his future fall." "Five Men Against the Theme …" and "Sammy Chester …" use older techniques in a new way; that is, the unusual junction of words, the coinages, the sudden contrasts, and repetitions, remain within the bounds of a simplicity which is accessible to the pause for thought. There are other poems which make such combinations, and still others which move close to direct statement. "A Black Wedding Song" is a good example of this group.

The poems are evidence that the newer techniques will not sacrifice the complex rhythms of existence in their attempts to reach a wider audience. (pp. 110-11)