The earliest poems [in Selected Poems] could be anybody's favorites—delightful to the ear and sufficiently intricate to the mind. That chromatic postcard from the Southwest, "Vaquero," would brighten any breakfast table, a tease between good cheer and mockery—qualities consistent throughout Gunslinger and the recent Hello, La Jolla. The obliqueness, the delicacy of rhyme, the refinement, the evocation are all present that early: the ability to summon totality out of the shadows like a skilled waiter, rather than shove its platters in your face. (pp. 157-58)

The poems reward our close attention nicely. "The Hide of My Mother"—in its first section—moves to rhyme like a ballad…. "My mother, who has a hide …," what does that mean? Is it to be taken literally, as in a fable or myth, such as Olson was capable of? And if she already has a hide, that peculiar thing, what...