FOX ON A BARN DOOR

Winner of the Eric Gregory Award for 1964, Ted Walker is an English poet who has published several of these poems in The New Yorker; most of the other poems in this first collection have appeared in England. He is traditionally English in his subject matter and tone of voice, writing chiefly (and best) long, quiet nature-descriptions of seashores, fields, starlings, fish, etc. His placid English countryside is, however, updated by an underlying nervous awareness of violence and decay; though the American reader, accustomed to a brusquer voice of alienation, may not find in this muted language and sometimes self-conscious vocabulary quite the ""fear and loss"" Mr. Walker intends, but rather, a familiar literary landscape made attractive by a romantic sadness and sense of change. These themes have necessarily preoccupied many nature poets; Mr. Walker gives them grace, freshness, and a quiet strength.