Susan Musgrave is vibrantly self-engrossed. She is not careful; she is often careless, but spontaneously, valiantly, vividly so. Miss Musgrave is a young poet and [Songs of the Sea-Witch] is a young woman's book, but there is no mistaking the authentic voice of an emerging poet. Precision of observation, concreteness of language, vitality of imagery, imaginative power, all these Susan Musgrave abundantly displays.

                My ribs are torn
                like old whores' petticoats.

she writes in "Exposure"; and in "Jan. 6th":

              The long days mate with
              the nude on the calendar.
              I have packed time like a suitcase
              and now there is nothing left to do
              but organize my boredom.

Miss Musgrave's is a narrow canvas, but while highly personal it is no mere embroidery frame. She has the ability to evoke landscapes, but she is no nature pantheist. Her land-scapes become a metaphor for a personal vision which mirrors...