William Bronk writes about time and space; he writes about motion, the "motion" of interrelationships: people, places, objects, ideas. Like Wallace Stevens, a poet whom he resembles in some respects, he writes about the mind's motion, the processes of cognition. And he writes about these matters over and over again…. Like most major talents he holds on to a few ideas, and makes of them, over the years, his "quarrel with himself." (p. 222)

Over the years Bronk's diction has become sparer, his forms both more experimental and more crabbed—he is now writing quatrains and tercets—but the deft syntax, the mastery of "pause" and effect, the easy amplitude of statement, rarely too much or too little, and the refusal to yield imagery over to discourse …, are evidences of this ruminative poet's unvarying stance. Bronk is remarkably even, and remarkably urgent. Our poet is a poet of argument...