Pets, carnage on an international scale, archeological excavations, and contemporary friendships make an odd, exceptionally affecting circuit in this much-lauded English poet's impressive new work. Middleton (Intimate Chronicles
; The Word Pavilion
; etc.) taught German for 32 years at the University of Texas-Austin, where he acquired renown as a translator (of Kafka, Christa Wolf and many others); he has spent recent years in southern Europe. His forms, with their hard-edged two- and three-line stanzas, prove equally skillful in meticulous, small-scale detail (as in several resonant poems about cats) and in laments for world-historical evil (such as the Armenian genocide). Moreover (and more than in past volumes) each thoughtful, chiseled poem takes its tone and its scene just to the point where its particular attributes crystallize in relief. Whether in Phoenician harbors, a contemporary art museum, at a friend's grave, or in the nautical pastoral of "A Far Cry from Fear Island," Middleton shows how "ordinary motions, daily gestures/ Apparently disturb the sheet of time." These poems reveal just how banal most historico-travel poetry in stanzaic form is, and what it can still yield if done right. Middleton's U.S. admirers (Rosanna Warren, August Kleinzahler) have themselves learned much from his technique; this strongest of Middleton's recent and impressive volumes may be enough to win him half the audience he deserves. (Oct.)
