Darker Ends

Forty-two poems by a writer whose subjects, rhymed lines, patterned structures, and melodic diction place him within the great tradition of English lyric poetry. Robert Nye writes about love and its painful absence, intimately addressing himself to wife, child, friend. Like other lyric poets, he turns to nature for his imagery, using wintery landscapes to illustrate a spirit grown "dissatisfied and cold" in this "of all probably worlds worst." No clangor of cities enters his scenes, but the snow- clad rural setting of "Gathering Sticks" and "A Bat In A Box" has not been exempted from the modern malaise of depersonalized lovelessness. The prevailing mood of the poems is elegaic or bitter - too expectably so, perhaps, but they are often lovely and at times elegant. Especially nice are "A Winter's Surprise," a wry song to love transformed; "Anniversary," celebrating "five years marred or married"; and "An Answer For the Owl," short and polished. The longest poem, "Crowson," is excellently realized both as an elegy to an unloved old man and as an agonized moment of truth for the poet. (Kirkus Reviews)