VIRGIL'S MACHINE

Unrhymed, highly private in expression, these poems are surcharged with a bursting emotion which is often conveyed by images that are striking but apparently disconnected. Some of the poems have the eerie sub-logical quasi-continuity of the dreams of someone under anaethesia; some are composed of images and lists of things which appear to have no more relation to each other than if they had been snipped out of paper and randomly pasted together, or written by a computer. In roughly half the poems, however, the images and meanings are sufficiently organized so that their disjointed stream-of-consciousness successfully expresses a strong emotional effect. These are good and interesting; one wishes the poet would similarly organize the fascinating litter of fragmented ideas and objects in the other poems.