[Ghost in the Wheels] is obviously Birney's own selection of the poems he likes best—"none I think great and none I hope bad," as he wryly adds. (p. 95)

Birney accompanies these poems with a brief preface, in which—as always—he notes that critics have misunderstood him and have not allowed for the inventive element in poems that—like "David"—sound personal—have not, in other words, reckoned with the difference between the poet in the act of experiencing and the poet in the act of imaginative transformation. It is a valid plea, though one may justly wonder whether—in the guerrilla war that Birney has carried on for so many years with his reviewers—he has not sometimes missed those occasions when a perceptive critic will detect a nuance of true meaning that misses the poet when he becomes his own reader. (pp. 95-6)

Birney's preface...