In each generation only so many poets are allowed to flourish. The determining question is not one of quality, oh no; the academics and public need their one pinnacle figure for each style, type, mode, and/or movement of literature. A poet may not be classified so readily, but like a bedlam lepidopterist the crowd labels the poet, pins his wings and decides if he is to hang in a place of honor on the wall (under constricting glass of course) or be filed away amidst endless drawers. Those filed away become footnotes to academics and forgotten by the public. Vernon Watkins was, alas, a word-drunk rhapsodist. The crowd had already awarded that post to Watkins' dear friend Dylan Thomas.

Watkins was considered part of the New Apocalypse poetry set, yet he held more affinity with Yeats than with Barker. His poetry has much in common with Thomas, but Thomas did not equal him until his dying days ("In the White Giant's Thigh" and whatnot). Where Dylan was knotted and confused Vernon was woven and allusive. Vernon was a perfectionist with a wonderful, though unusual, ear for language. Fellow poet Kathleen Raine said it best: "Not Yeats himself could spin those gossamer lines, strung with their words like perfect spheres of dew, that characterise Vernon Watkins' finest lyrics; yet that gossamer is held by forces strong and coterminous with the universe."

The poems in this volume are sublime: the recurring classical images of nature and myth deftly handled, the rhythms by turn soothing and soaring, the glorious glorious language. Imagine if a cache of previously unknown Hopkins or Thomas poems turned up . . . you would be, or should be, justifiably ecstatic. Well, such a fortuitous happening is not likely, but seeking out the poetry of Vernon Watkins will have a similar effect upon you. The year or vineyard may vary, but the vintage is heavenly nontheless.

I leave you now, wanting, but here stands a stanza from "Ophelia:"

Stunned in the stone light, laid among the lilies,/ Still in the green wave, graven in the reed-bed,/ Lip-read by clouds in the language of the shallows./ Lie there, reflected.