Roy Fisher's poems are dark and turbulent. One section of [Collected Poems 1968], called simply City, is exemplary; in it, a poetic conscience corresponding to modernity sets out, in visionary terms, on a journey to its own painful beginnings. With the exception of one poem, The Entertainment of War,… the section reads like an attempt, on the part of humanity, to come to terms with inhumanity, with the built-in phthisis of the urban situation. However, Fisher's tone is too reserved, and the grand undertaking he may have only felt awaits some future seer. The City poems are more vital than visionary, in at least one sense. They speak to an awareness; their dark heat raises an ordinary moment in the mind, so that the images almost crunch…. (p. 51)

In general, Fisher seems a bit over-serious, but he avoids the exaggeration and egocentricity that mar most 'serious' poetry. A minimal...