Fellow Feelings contains some of [Richard Howard's] most impressive work. These include "Venetian Interior, 1889," a remarkably full rendering of the sad world of Pen Browning; "Decades"; and "The Giant on Giant-Killing." The latter two utilize Hart Crane's history and Donatello's bronze of David, respectively, to illumine Howard's own life. Both poems openly explore homosexuality: indeed, the book is the most out-of-the-closet collection since Howard's own Two-Part Inventions. Rather than being sensational, Howard's poems convey tenderness, and seek understanding. He movingly pictures both himself and Crane as on "permanent short-leave from the opposite sex." In "The Giant on Giant-Killing" we are given a defense of homosexuality, yet are reminded that the name Goliath, while meaning destroyer in Assyrian, means exile in Hebrew. Throughout the volume there is a feeling of singularity and alienation.

Howard's most felicitous gift is for the well-turned epigram. Some are worthy of Wilde: "Ripeness is...