There are three poetic Fentons, two of comparatively minor interest. One offers botanical, psychological or medical "exempla" taken from books or other printed work as poems, rather in the whimsical manner of the surrealists exhibiting "found objects" as art. Another produces light verse that is always lively, sometimes funny, and often marked by a deadly topicality…. The third Fenton, however, has fulfilled what "Our Western Furniture" promised, in a dozen magnificent poems. It is notable that almost all of them have their origins in his Cambodian and German experiences.

The title poem of ["Children in Exile"] is one of them. In elegant, almost casual four-line stanzas Fenton tells the story of four child refugees from Pol Pot's Cambodia….

"Children in Exile" is not exactly a narrative poem, but it "tells a story" in a way that is so unfashionable to-day as to be called bold. The directness and...