Part I of this extraordinary autobiographical poem [Letter to an Imaginary Friend] was first published in 1962…. McGrath has grown measurably since he wrote that first volume with its hairy nimbus of half-shaken memories of a Dakota youth, of friends half-forgotten or dead, of groping first-doubts stiffened by war experiences. Here the stylistic overtones are Thomas Wolfe without Wolfe's purified identity or fictional frame of reference. But Part II, here published in its entirety for the first time, shows a remarkable gain; McGrath suddenly stands "naked as a studhorse in a rhubarb patch," delivering himself with sharp, stinging certainty. He is proclaiming our lost heritage, naming our traumas—"The Indian is the first wound," and money. McGrath is a writer of long poems, labyrinthine as his life; but in many passages and in the terrible statement of desolation toward the close of Part II he merits rank with the...