Fine, strong, simple, almost impersonal, these poems look out over landscapes and lives sometimes decaying, sometimes held clearly as in amber, but always seen vividly and whole and from a slight distance. The tone is at times nearly colloquial, but always unobtrusively splendid, heightening the life-stories and landscapes into timelessness. The scenery ranges from dusty Midwestern plains to European lakes; from the landscapes of love to those of defeat; and in the last long poem, all themes, love, history, time, personalities, come together on a Wisconsin lake-shore. American subjects and landscapes predominate; a high sense of brooding spaciousness, of human lives and houses, powerfully conveys the bigness, change, bleakness and aliveness of a wide country. Excellent, sure, precise, with an easy grace and strength, these are wholly satisfying and solid poems.