Frederick Morgan's new book, Poems of the Two Worlds, comes as a welcome surprise after the success of his first collection, A Book of Change. The mature religious outlook, emotional honesty and clarity of style show up again, but with them we find a new range of insight and subject matter. The prospect is breathtaking, the achievement unique in contemporary poetry. Morgan is a master of vision and verse; with things to say, he speaks right out: "The book of the world has opened to my page."

Like Walt Whitman, Morgan is a poet of the body and the soul. Without adopting Whitman's mannerisms, as some poets unfortunately have tried to do, he sets out on a Whitmanesque tour of the physical and spiritual landscapes that are the terrain of modern America. The mysticism of the East and the rocky coast of Maine, Christ risen from the dead...