I took up The Lonely Suppers of W. V. Balloon with some excitement. I expected a little more, perhaps; but I can recommend this volume nonetheless…. (pp. 139-40)

[Middleton's] art is an elaborate personal mosaic of "fragments shored against our ruins." Middleton cares deeply for "… things / their mass & contour / & all beginnings" ("In Balthazar's Village"). Objects interest him in the same way they did Picasso, and the poems often remind one of Cubist paintings; the artist views the same thing from different angles, and the work becomes a dance around the object, an exercise in perspective. Wallace Stevens is a precursor in this vein, of course, and Middleton's "A Cart of Apples" resembles a poem like "Sea Surface Full of Clouds," in which each stanza shifts the scene slightly, juggling the same elements in search of a new perspective…. This is the poetry of process; in effect, the poet...