[Christopher Middleton's] epigraph, a dictionary definition of his title [Torse 3], runs: "A developable surface; a surface generated by a moving straight line which at every instant is turning, in some plane or other through it, about some point or other in its length." If I understand this correctly, it is a description—a very apt and ingenious one—of poetry as craft, and in fact the concern of his book is usually more with how he is writing than with what he is writing.

Mr. Middleton uses several clearly distinguishable styles, ranging from that of direct statement to that of impenetrable obliquity…. The quick changes from style to style may be partly explained by the fact that Torse 3 is a collection of twelve years' work, but even so the effect is less of an evolution in the writing than of a man trying on different coats.

Mr. Middleton...