The excitement of Ann Lauterbach’s poetry, underneath all, comes from its sense of high drama. Hers is a drama of manners just at the point where they are being torn away, and one is left without any devices—except perception.

One may admire the painterly, delicate language here, but not at the risk of ignoring Lauterbach’s very persistent and elaborated psychology. These poems are peopled: with men, mothers, friends, rivals, heroes, relatives dead and alive, all real and subject to the motions of grief or envy or gratitude.