[In Letters From the Savage Mind Patrick Lane] allows his persona to stand at the centre of the majority of his poems, which are especially good when he deals with the ordinary affairs of himself and his family. Just under the surface of these poems lie enormous fears and questions but they never assume moral proportions. The encroachments of age, the madness of political situations, childlessness, loneliness and anonymity in the big city, outbursts of violence are all fixed within the circle of himself and the environments he lives in, visits or remembers. Ordinary things take on aspects of seriousness; they belong to individuals, and individuals are what matter in this terrifying world. Thus, the poetry focuses on seemingly small and unimportant things: cats, dogs—alive or dead, an ant, children and children's games, an orange lawnmower, a carved wooden fish. He remembers the outer world by things...