“These remarkable poems with their vivid phrasing and startling imagery may “rustle a while/in forever’s hourglass,” as D. H. Tracy puts it. I suspect that they will rustle a lot longer in that captious glass. There seems to be no form or mode of which this poet does not possess a sure mastery. There are reflective elegies which demonstrate his enviable command of the long loping melodious line. But there are also equally impressive quatrains, tightly woven, brilliantly rhymed, which are somehow (I don’t know quite how he does it) alive and fresh; they breathe in their bonds. Many of the poems display a wacky sense of humour, almost surrealistic in effect; these abound with the “willowy and skittish spirits” the poet appears to be on perilously familiar terms with. Grave poems, splendidly cadenced, alternate with mischievous ditties—almost but not quite “light verse,” thanks to the sly sense of a vague menace which runs through them. At the same time, these are exploratory poems in which unexpected landscapes flicker forth and a strangely transformed geography reveals its hidden contours. This is a magical collection of poetry, at once magisterial and sprightly. Each poem from first to last comes with all the elation of sudden discovery.” -