Nothing wrong with being small…. Poets from time immemorial have achieved big things not only in long forms like epic, but in such small packages as haiku, epigram, and lyric. Two of today's important poets whose stature owes largely to their meticulous care for the small details of writing, Philip Whalen and Anselm Hollo … have excellent new books out this summer.

Whalen, nearing sixty, was an authentic mover in the San Francisco "Poetry Renaissance' of the 1950s. In Heavy Breathing, a collection of all the poems he's published in the last dozen years, his gifts of ear and eye, split-second emotional annotations, speed and lightness and occasional flashing pipeline-rides along the crest of the imagination, confirm his position as a contemporary local master.

Whalen's work may eventually stand as the number one production of the whole strain of West Coast poetry which weds naturalism and Zen-style reflection into...