Nothing at all controls James Tate's choice of metaphors, similes, images, or statements in his new book of poetry. The title poem, "Riven Doggeries," reads like a page from the comics…. Like verbal doodling, whatever pops into the poet's mind crops up in the poem. Tate has a fine ear for inane colloquialisms and absurd figures of speech, but this volume is a far cry from the austere beauty of Absences and its probing of the Self. Perhaps success, which gives even the most sensitive poet second thoughts about his own seriousness, has caused Tate to become too cunning and whimsical…. Sometimes a ray of satire peeps through, as in "The Life of Poetry" …, but even here the humor becomes sophomoric. (p. 140)

James Finn Cotter, "Poetry, Ego, and Self," in The Hudson Review (copyright © 1980 by The Hudson Review, Inc.; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Spring, 1980, pp. 131-...