Robert Hass's Field Guide is an impressive first collection, whether one is looking for a poet who develops a new track or one who proves his skill along older routes. Without many contradictions in tone or method, Hass appears to do both. Reminiscent in his sharply detailed lists of the purist Imagists, Hass can just as deftly move from image to the statement of the experience which crystallizes the happening for the reader. The poet's consistent voice is the unifying device. (p. 89)

Field Guide as a collection also has integrity. The poems in the three sections fit well together; they are arranged, as the title suggests, to provide a guide, a map, to both natural phenomena and human experience.

Part I, entitled "The Coast," pictures the various areas of California which Hass chooses to write about—Sausalito, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Bolinas. But he carefully opens the book...