[Visions from San Francisco Bay] is a course of bromides on The American Way of Life And Where It Is All Heading: intellectual tummy rumblings. Like Polonius, Milosz is full of Philosophy…. The datedness of everything he says is always camouflaged by [its] wooden latin abstractedness. 'I do not number myself', he informs us, 'among those who seek unusual landscapes, nor do I take photographs of Nature's panoramas'. We are to understand that he has weightier matters to contend with, but he sounds more like a pantomime dame than a poet. (p. 44)

For Milosz, society is a board game for the senile, with easy-to-spot trends and tendencies boldly outlined in black and white: 'The police ban on marijuana is causing the whites to draw nearer the blacks because of the similarity of their situations.' This is pretty keen. But he has the benefit of 20 years' hindsight, remember...