I have rarely read a book of poems as eclectic in style and as uneven in achievement as Frederick Morgan's "Death Mother."… In this, his fourth book, a beginner's awkwardness crops up unpredictably to startle a reader who has just been admiring something finely turned. Certain modes (and Mr. Morgan tries just about everything) are simply not for this poet. Some "confessional" poems about a previous marriage do not work; neither do a pair of dramatic monologues spoken by an early American colonist and a Caribbean trader. Other narrative or meditative poems begin promisingly only to founder in passages of didactic moralizing. Some are unintentionally comic, such as a poem on the Wedding in Cana….

On the other hand, an elegy for the poet's son achieves a genuine and dignified pathos. And there are fine descriptive lyrics inspired by the austere beauties of Chinese poetry…. The long title...