Mr. Gregor has published three other books, and many of the poems in this collection have appeared in leading magazines. This long experience reveals itself in the polish and unhurried thoughtfulness of these poems. There is little youthful immediacy and toughness, although the form and lack of rhymes shun the shapes of traditional poetry; the tone, is, rather, dreamy, rambling, almost prose-like. This minor key sense of life (""idealized love turned/ to pure lament on lutes/ and viols""), an intellectual craving for struggle made beautiful by distance and art, gives the poems a remote beauty. Even the death of his mother is transformed into a series of images and ruminations, until all that's mortal in her and in her dying turns to air and flowers. This supra-reality, this cloudlike transcendence of human images, angers, faults, has a restful, timeless quality; one misses, however, an occasional explosion of feeling or image which might serve as counterpoint.