[The Home Book, a] collection of previously unpublished or hard-to-obtain poems and prose pieces written between 1951 and 1970 makes a fascinating introduction not only to an individual writer's work but also to the principal virtues and vagaries of the New York School aesthetic which James Schuyler has helped both to develop and to articulate. The book is not wholly characteristic of its author. Even the two dozen poems and short prose "meditations" printed here make few of those strange lyrical and abstract transformations from the natural world which [exemplify his work]…. The rest of The Home Book is a bit of a ragbag too…. Within this uneven assortment, however, there are several moments of simple, fresh and confident vision of a character never seen or attempted in contemporary British writing.

"A Picnic Cantata" … celebrates effectively the simple joys of going out for the day with friends. A similarly satisfying...