Henry James praised his Americans for their "accessibility to experience," and this is a phrase that fits Frederick Morgan's poetry. His is an esthetic of inclusions. At the round table of his imagination, many impulses, personal histories and anonymously authored myths are given voice and substance. Morgan has avoided the cage of a single stylistic manner or presentational format; instead he allows his poems to write themselves, with the metric, diction and tone that fit each case. The variety of [Death Mother and Other Poems] is impressive.

The title poem is at once the book's most ambitious and most original. It is written in 10 sections, each taking up some perspective on our earthly end. Death inhabits the poet's imagination as the female archetype of primitive myth—mother, earth, lover, grave. She engenders, nurtures, gives substance and resumes it when the time comes…. Scene by vivid scene, Morgan narrates...