What is a Gun Dog? An uncontrolled creature purportedly under our control? These poems strain at the lead. The torque is felt in the line, the verb, the wild thinking in metaphor. The maturity of James Langer's vision reveals itself here in the cumulative effect of his rhetoric. He won't land on his quarry -- Love, Forgiveness, Respect of Place, Clarity of Memory. He will, however, attain wisdom within these poems, a measured equanimity that can be traced back to the Stoics.

These lines are like those of Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Robin Robertson. Here is a debut from a genuine, fully formed talent whose poems reach the sublime.