Galway Kinnell once said, according to Donald Hall, that he had no use for any poem upon which the poet did not bring to bear the weight of his entire life. The results of such a standard are there to see in Kinnell's earlier books—the unrelenting seriousness, the pressure always to be deeply significant. It is exhausting sometimes, and has made Kinnell a poet best ingested in small doses. [Mortal Acts, Mortal Words] is different; its relaxed tone is apparent from the start and results in a number of lighthearted poems, poems one feels Kinnell could not have written before. He is now capable, for example, of poems like "On the Tennis Court at Night," a kind of elegy for all the good times, times of friendship and youth…. [The last stanza] is both effective and affective, part of what may be the best tennis poem in...