Death Mother and Other Poems is an impressive … book of poetry by Frederick Morgan. In the richness of contemporary American poetry there are many poets of interesting sensibility; Morgan is that rare thing—a poet of intelligence who is also a good writer. His admirable variety of style and theme contrasts markedly with the monochrome of many of his contemporaries. This is not just a collection; it is a book, moving through a cluster of themes held together by a central concern—death…. Morgan, while achieving the clarity suggested by the adjective simple, does not communicate the intense passion found in poems by (to name three among many) Yeats, Lowell, and Kinnell; his lines often lack the sensuous evocative quality of language that can take a reader deeper than the intellectual level of communication found in good prose. Perhaps Morgan writes too fluidly and too discursively when he...