Glyn Maxwell's poems are adventures from the known to the unknown, seeming to take even more delight in the exploration than in the content of the lessons learned. A series of verse letters to the English poet Edward Thomas, killed in the First World War, anchors the book, but the variety of form and mood here -- from the mysteriously introspective to the overtly humorous -- is breathtaking. With this, his fourth collection of poems, Glyn Maxwell proves himself to be a contemporary master in the tradition of W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, and even Robert Frost, whose time in both England and America he evokes.