Among the poets of the generation born between 1940 and 1955, those whose work was included in The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (1985), Leon Stokesbury has perhaps been the most selective about the number of poems he has allowed into print, having published only two collections and two chapbooks in a career that spans four decades. In an age when many poets have seemingly confused quantity with quality, Stokesbury remains a scrupulous craftsman, often revising poems up to the moment of publication. A public performer of great skill, he has increasingly tailored his poems over the years to the cadences and range of idioms of his speaking voice, and as remarkable as his poems may appear on the page they gain immeasurably when the poet presents them in one of his frequent readings. However, Stokesbury's work possesses depths beyond the poems' surface humor and pathos; a serious student of...