The poetry of Nancy Willard seems quite different in theme and tone from much of the literature written by women during the 1960s and 1970s. The major social and personal issues of the feminist movement are not centrally addressed in her five volumes. Instead, as Stanley Poss declares in his review of Carpenter of the Sun (1974), Willard "seems very much at home with herself and her world which, in comparison to [Adrienne] Rich's, is viable rather than not," and as Francine Danis writes in her essay "Nancy Willard's Domestic Psalms," "Willard's poetry, bright, graceful, and often playful, radiates womanly fullness, contentment, and reverence." Yet if the writer's voice is not angry nor desperately troubled, neither is it complacent nor trite. At the heart of Willard's poetry lies a commitment to order, unity, and permanence, but this commitment grows out of her clear perception of contrary, potentially disruptive forces...