The poems in this, W. S. Di Piero's fifth collection of poetry, are animated by an ancient vision of the human state as existing somewhere between the divine and the bestial; tense with the compulsion toward formal order and the wild yearning after chaos, these are tough poems, gritty and relentless; they indulge neither the reader nor the poet. Their austere lyricism expresses Di Piero's desire for transcendent meaning, and their unflinching attention to natural and cultural history reflects an equally strong instinct for the earthbound.