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BATTLE REPORT by Harvey Shapiro Kirkus Star

BATTLE REPORT

By

Pub Date: Sept. 22nd, 1966
Publisher: Wesleyan Univ. Press

Excellent. Most of the poems in this collection are brief subdivisions of four long sections which are related in mood and subject. Section I deals with various notes and comments on the dilemmas of modern man--fresh, simply-written, sometimes minor observations, and more often deceptively slight descriptions revealing and echoing an underlying wealth of associations. The section of poems on Hebrew history has a splendor of phrase and mystery, at times obscure to the reader unfamiliar with that religion and past. The five poems in Section III are marvelous subliminal impressions of man as traveller in self and other countries. ""Battle Report,"" Section IV, is a cool, wild account of a bombing raid, oddly exhilarating in its sense of remoteness, of death in the icy solitudes of upper air and long distances. A gifted poet, who can convey a great range of emotion, a sense of place and the past, in a few direct and simple lines.