William Heyen's Noise in the Trees makes a new myth out of the circumstances of his own past and that of Long Island. Earlier American literature enters into this … but is less important in the creation of this poetic world than the personal and local history. Heyen presents again those classic American themes—the loss or corruption of youth, the idealized girl, the island, the wild, the animals. I have a sense of the presence of the Robert Lowell of For the Union Dead, and perhaps of Life Studies as well, though there are no shock tactics and less in the way of raw nerves displayed here…. [But] these echoes are peripheral, though highly relevant; at the centre of this world is the poet's own very appealing voice and personality. One hears a gentle, nostalgic man quietly and forcefully speaking of his anxieties, his old loves and obsessions...