The Branch Will Not Break

"These poems are splendidly direct, magnificently simple; sometimes the phrasing is so elegantly obvious that the heart jumps at it...This is a book which ought to be read at least three times, and then maybe once a month for as long as one lives. The first three readings are essential, if the reader is going to get much from these poems; they seem to make so few demands, they look so obvious, they are so subtle."—Hal Smith, Epoch

"I like the force here, the clarity and directness, the language bound intimately with idea and image; and the harshness, the precision, the sense of fitness and place for every syllable."—Harry Strickhausen, Poetry

"These poems are splendidly direct, magnificently simple; sometimes the phrasing is so elegantly obvious that the heart jumps at itThis is a book which ought to be read at least three times, and then maybe once a month for as long as one lives. The first three readings are essential, if the reader is going to get much from these poems; they seem to make so few demands, they look so obvious, they are so subtle."—Hal Smith, Epoch

"His is a world haunted by the past and apprehensive of the future. It is, symbolically, the world of contemporary experience."—Gene Baro, The New York Times Book Review