Many who are filled with dubiety when they spy another this volume of poetry in bookstore windows will be pleasantly surprised by Adrienne Rich's second book of verse. For Miss Rich is not playing a guessing game or constructing her work of the over-brittle, almost nervous niceties that appeal to a number of modern academic poets. Her poetry combines relaxed craftsmanship with an uncompromising clarity that gives new vigor to themes that are far from new.

Mortality and immortality as they combine in human beings, and especially in lovers, are the great motifs of her work. Time runs through all the poems, destroying what has been beloved and bringing forth new loveliness in its place with the renewal of seasons and of generations. And with this sense of time, there is great feeling for the imperfection of humanity, an imperfection that must be accepted, but not with possimism:

Our friends were not unearthly beautiful,

Nor spoke with tongues of gold; our lovers blundered

Now and again when most we sought perfection,

Or hid in cupboards when the heavens thundered.

The human rose to haunt us everywhere,

Raw, flawed, and asking more than we could bear.

This is no condemnation of modern life, however. It is an expression of the cyclical quality of human life in any era. The joy and mystery of childhood pass, too:

Wonderful bears that walked my room all night,

Where are you gone ...

When did I lose you? whose have you become?

Why do I wait and never hear

Your thick nocturnal pacing in my room?

My bears, who keeps you now, in pride and fear?