Donald Justice is a conservative poet. He works within the established boundaries of modern poetry and makes no attempt to extend those boundaries. He is also a very literary, academic poet: you do not need to be familiar with The Tempest to understand or take pleasure from Justice's poem, "Last Days of Prospero," but such a familiarity will deepen your understanding and increase your pleasure; a reading of the poem may even strengthen your appreciation of Shakespeare's play. Selected Poems contains many literary references, but previous knowledge of the works to which Justice refers is more of a bonus than a necessity, when it comes to understanding and enjoying his poems. At no point in this book will you be confounded by your inability to interpret a Chinese ideogram or to translate from the original Greek. Donald Justice is even an old-fashioned poet, equally as willing to give...