If being a philosophic poet means finding, in all the changing conditions of one's life, the poetic correlative—the tone and language—appropriate to one's reflections on inner and outer experience, then Roy Fuller is perhaps the best philosophic poet writing in English today, the nearest to Matthew Arnold in his time, or Wordsworth in his. Indeed, perhaps the reference to Wordsworth is more apposite than an immediate glance through Fuller's poetry might suggest, for both have the unfulfilled ambition to promote the meeting of poetry and common speech, as Fuller admits in his new book, From the Joke Shop: "It seems I rarely found the common touch / Though my emotions common as they come." And both move from revolutionary youths (Godwinian for Wordsworth and Marxist for Fuller) to positions unexpected in the uncritical generosity of youth. (p. 858)

From the Joke Shop is a book of contemplative verse...