"We bleat our love in God's pastures," writes Robert Peters in a closing poem in Shaker Light (1987), speaking in the voice of Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion. This is a typical Peters move, mixing the physical with the spiritual and contrasting one level (God) with the reality of daily life, which is full of bleats and longings. Influenced by early modernists such as Thomas Hardy and by the frankness of William Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr., and the Beats, Peters combines an uncensored vision of human nature with an often baroque vocabulary and a constant awareness of the physical world. His willingness to describe society's viscera has lead some readers to undervalue his contributions; put off by the homosexuality of Ludwig of Bavaria or the brutality of the Blood Countess--to name two historical figures treated in his poetry--they want to dismiss Peters as a deviant or...