This quintessential New England poet brings the same solid ear, wry humor, keen historical sense, and sharp eye for natural and social detail to every poem. He is one of our zestiest poets of things-as-they-are, happily allergic to obscurity, pretension, and gauzy abstraction. Every poem is *placed*: firmly located in time and space, naturally, but also placed with utmost care on the page. His sinewy free verse is given flexibility by his great control of syntax and his diction, as always, is capacious and thickly textured. Calling a poet "readable" these days might seem like damnation with faint praise, but to my mind we need a lot more poetry which combines accessibility, good humor, and intelligence as skillfully as Galvin always does. This collection is both meaty and enjoyable: a great read.

These stroies are worth reading,but the translations in this book are fairly bland. In fact, the translation for Ajax is pretty bad. I don't think I've ever seen the word twinkie used in a Greek trajedy before. I would recomend picking up other versions of these plays.