Written mostly in long cadenced lines reminiscent of Jeffers, [Letter to an Imaginary Friend] constitutes a loose framework in which anything and everything can be developed as semiautonomous sections. In a medley of memory and observation, the poet ranges back and forth over past and present. Episodes of childhood, youth, today mingle with reflections on social and political events. One moment he describes his first job or the dawning awareness of the nubility of girls, the next he narrates how "The leather priests of the hieratic dollar enclave to bless / The lushworking washing machines of the Protestant Ethic ecumenical / Laundries: to steam the blood from the bills…." There is a Bunyan-sized quality about the book—its length, the vigor and vividness of the infinitely varied sections, the kaleidoscopic picture it gives of mid-century America and one man's response to the spectacle. Both as poetry and as social history...