Reading Philip Whalen's Enough Said made me feel nostalgic for a moment at the end of the 1960s when it seemed possible that relaxed thinking and a jotter by the ashtray might be the longed-for alternative to failure and the midnight oil. Lines like Whalen's "I looked inside the refrigerator and said 'Credit Lyonnais'" seemed to catch a certain explosive humour and to be always on the point of delivering something profound. They never did: such flashes looked pale in the light of day. Yet there was a mood of giggly disjointedness, and an aesthetic of stoned silliness, that tolerated such cuteness. It was a reaction to the world of "You Know it Makes Sense", a poetry of jingles, headlines, and politics rather than a poetry in which feeling or wit might properly figure. It was also, in the end, one of poetry's blind alleys: fun for a...