Hugo Williams's biggest popular success came with No Particular Place to Go (1981), a travel book relating the poet's journey from East to West in the United States and back again. An engaging, funny, and frank book, it has also been published in paper-back by Picador. His major effort, however, has been in poetry, and his first three full-length collections in particular--Symptoms of Loss (1965), Sugar Daddy (1970), and Some Sweet Day (1975)--represent what may be the finest work produced in one of the two main schools associated with the Review (later the New Review). One of these schools can be seen as including the somewhat baroque wit of John Fuller, James Fenton, and Clive James, writing in a tradition with clear links to W. H. Auden; the other discernible school, of which Williams has been an accomplished member, placed an emphasis on seeing the everyday and ordinary in bare...