LOVE'S ARGUMENT

A witty turn of mind and a crystalline phrasing characterize this group of brief, skillful poems. An ""expert interventionalist"" between living a life and having a life, the poet writes of love, of natural and eternal harmonies of which love is the essence. In All Useful and the title poem there is a joyous acceptance of the vortex of cosmic attraction, a yielding to the sea-and-shore free communion of love, the harmony of the ""laughing structure"" of the earth. In the sonnets also the poet communicates a buoyant, early morning exhilaration, yet the structure of each poem is tight and firm, the phrasing precise and smooth. Nice, neat -- these poems have a lyrical movement and ease of image which rescues them from the stigma of ""feminine minutiae"". However, this is a book distinctly for a special poetry audience.