I first encountered Davison on the page about ten years ago in the appropriately titled multisequence poem, "Not Forgotten." I was impressed beyond measure by the dexterity with which … the poet had juxtaposed orders of emotion and simile so discrete as to imply, if this had been proposed and not yet actualized, a feat unlikely or impossible to achieve…. The present selection of his verse [Walking the Boundaries: Poems 1957–1974] surpasses the most confident expectations I had meanwhile formed. And the essential character of his art—its character, not its full range nor its scale of intonations—is trenchantly illustrated … [in] the almost instinctive reference to creatures of the wild, the unstinting concern with mortality, the sardonic revision of knowledge unbearably somber. (pp. 80-1)

Davison's poems may not invariably begin in delight; they always end in wisdom; or they incorporate a parenthesis of invincible candor that robs us of...