Sometimes he seems overly laconic to me, but all told this is imaginative and in many places moving. Some of them begin to feel a bit like Hardy's poems that struggle with Jahweh.

This book's premise and thematic trajectory are very appealing. And there are a handful of fine poems. But I'll admit: I was disappointed. The "poems" often read like thoughts broken into lines. Many of the entries in the "Notes" section are longer than the actual poems (a counter-productive tactic, I think) and take away—or rather place elsewhere—the energy that should be on the page within the poem. Haxton is no doubt astute—he teaches at Syracuse and Warren Wilson and More...