[John Montague's] short, terse lines [in Tides] keep fervent Irish rhetoric at bay, and give the love poems an uncommon precision. The best of these bring something fresh to the worn theme of the transience of love and the nearness of death. In 'Tracks', the act of lovemaking is set against the morning after, in the hotel, where 'giggling maids push / a trolley of fresh / linen down the corridor'. And in 'Premonition', one of the most accomplished of the poems, the poet dreams in nightmare of the torture of his girl, while at the same time in the nearby hospital she survives a difficult birth. He sleeps, and then, 'released from dream, / I lie in a narrow room; / Low-ceilinged as a coffin / The dawn prises open.'

The last two sections are disappointing. When John Montague writes about the sea, he doesn't have anything more to say than...