"Diving Into the Wreck" … was fueled by an immense pounding energy, a raw power, "raw" in the sense of "wound." It was played on a kettle drum with an ax, to a warehouse filled with riot casualties. By contrast, "The Dream of a Common Language" is played on the piano, at evening, beside a half-open window. There are one or two other people in the room, friends of the player, and perhaps some strangers listening outside. The music is subdued but intense, and it is only after you have been hearing it for some time that you realize the player is half-blind and is missing several fingers. These are poems written despite, poems of willed recuperation. Pain is no longer their theme but a given condition they are trying to transcend; the best word for what they have is perhaps not "power" but "authority."

This book will probably...