There is some compelling writing in A Book of Change. But what Morgan makes me realize once and for all is that nothing is true in a poem unless the poem makes it true. That is the poem's burden, and always has been, and always will be. Dozens of pages here consist of unadulterated sermons….

Frederick Morgan 1922– Courtesy of University of Illinois Press

There is too much soul here, and not enough body. It is difficult to urge these therapeutic poems toward something else as they cry out; also, the poems believe that they are less important than the transformations they effect within their author. But what they say to me has been said much better, and therefore much deeper and truer, elsewhere. (pp. 238-39)

William Heyen, "Four Realities," in Poetry (© 1973 by The Modern Poetry Association; reprinted by permission of the Editor of Poetry), Vol. CXXII, No. 4, July...