What I first admire about The Quarry, reading it whole, is how totally it is Richard Eberhart's. No matter what my response to single poems, I read them all as being demonstrably Eberhart's in rhythm, diction, and risk. However native this integrity, it's more than a negative virtue in the world of programmatic poetry where Eberhart's skilled juniors too often write what read like interchangeable translations of some Imagist Eskimo. It's no wonder that the Programmatic Poets, currently bent on murdering whatever elders are tall enough for parricide, have neglected knifing Eberhart in his always vunerable back. The virtues of Eberhart's poems, like their flaws, are simply too individual to be imitated. The self-defined Beats, by Kenneth Rexroth's example, once flirted with sanctifying Eberhart, but for the wrong reasons: they saw him merely as the single "academic" who seemed handsomely careless of traditional forms. Since the once-New Criticism...