When Finnish poets broke with tradition in the 1950s, there was no leader among them, no innovator bolder than the others who could mark a road for others to follow. Haavikko's first collection of poems … was not the very first to be written in the new manner; but the author almost immediately established himself as the most individual of the new poets and also … the least accessible to the average reader. At times critics and essayists have expressed bewilderment when attempting to analyze his works; ready-made labels do not easily apply to them, although such terms as "imagism," "decadent surrealism," and "romanticism" have been used…. Features typical of Haavikko's poetry [are an] interest in a mythical or, at times, quite well-defined past, described in solemn and slightly mysterious words, somewhat in the manner of St.-John Perse, and his abrupt changes from the description of material things to...