In the very first poem of "For the Sleepwalkers," Edward Hirsch reveals a major conflict:

          … yet we manage, we survive
          so that losing itself becomes a kind
          of song, our song, our only witness
          to the way we die, one day at a time …

But if this is a poetry of survival, it is also a poetry of narcissistic invention employing exaggerated tone and metaphor…. As Mr. Hirsch notes in "Cocks," "The guardian / Angel of poetry" endlessly tries "to astonish … and to offend."

"Poets, Children, Soldiers" can paradoxically contain a striking image of insomnia—"I'm tired / of living like a broken yellow oar / awash in the blue waters of nightfall"—immediately followed by the trite implication that only poets, children and soldiers "know about the black / trenches of moon-light on the ceiling."…

Personae appear, some famous (Rilke, Rimbaud, Nerval, Vallejo, Smart, Lorca). At his best, Mr. Hirsch confirms...