Malcolm Mooney's Land is W. S. Graham's first book in fifteen years, and it is an impressive performance, odd and not immediately attractive. The poems seem abstracted, elliptical, and chilly, and it takes many readings before one becomes fully aware of the strong pulse beating in these firmly penned lines. Graham's recurrent concern is with the radical leap poetry must take to reach its audience: he scouts over and over the barriers between poet and reader…. In the title poem he poses as an arctic explorer, sending out messages from the frozen waste he wanders in alone. Clusters Traveling Out offers another strange, tense picture of the poet's isolation…. Among the other poems I would like to mention The Lying Dear, a frank and supple poem about the act of love, and The Thermal Stair, a grave and moving elegy. There are several other equally memorable pieces. I...