Walking the Boundaries is a substantial selection from the work of an American poet … who has not been published over here before. What an assured talent is here unveiled! There seems to be little that Davison can't accomplish within the Frost/Jarrell tradition he is largely working in. The earlier poems have a fine singing line, sure-footed rhythms and a well-directed variety of form. There are monologues, confessions, ratiocinations, erotic mythologies, much sympathy and intelligence and surprising imaginative leaps. He can create characters and situations with facility, and later develops a descriptive power much in evidence in the rustic-symbolic landscapes of the four title-poems. There are a few bad poems (one about the stages of sexual experience and another about the Kennedy clan) but they are only bad in the degree to which they do not achieve the reader's assent. Davison's strategy is generally attractive. One reads on...