["The New World" is a collection of] essay-meditations on the architecture and algebra of space and time of the Incan and Mayan religious temples at Machu Picchu, Tikal, Copan, Palenque,… by one of our finest—though largely uncelebrated—poets. Lucid, precise, abstract, capable of infinitely slow movement and graceful, careful observation, the prose here is of a high order of excellence, a celebration of mystery and wonder, but human in its scale and its syntactical arrangements. It permits an excursion into the mysteries of Time and Space and Numbers….

In all his poems as well as here, Bronk's sensitivity is generated through his contemplation of architecture and habitation, by the details of a grand concept as well as the space it encloses. It's as if he has found and written, always vitally aware of the relationship between the sashes and beams and lintelings of his mill life and...