On nearly every page of Frederick Morgan's A Book of Change, I feel that I come into touch with a lively, warm human being through the poetry. Though in some sections of this ambitious and expansive poetic sequence the pressure of human feeling overtakes the formal structuring of lines and stanzas, how refreshing it is to read a premiere volume in which the sheer quantity of erupting life overwhelms the literary boundaries, at times….

Morgan, [the] founding editor of The Hudson Review,… has shifted the focus of much of [his] energetic brilliance—in midcareer—from the editorial platform to the swift unfolding of a full-fledged mature poetics of his own. Though for some twenty-odd years Morgan had written, intermittently, successful—if undistinguished—original verse and some passable translations, his poetic art has taken a breathtakingly sudden upswing in the last few years, and he leaps into prominence in...