It seems to me that Patrick Lane is one of our better contemporary poets when it comes to telling us about the place they inhabit with us. The Measure is a recent milestone/signpost of his being there—particularly West and Northwest. A controlling pattern of his earlier books like Beware the Months of Fire … and Poems New and Selected … is even clearer here: short sojourns, many journeys. He is but a little mad north-northwest; but whichever direction the wind sits that blows through so many of his poems, he has a bracing body of work and calloused hands to show for his and his persona's travels. (p. 102)

As in a lot of our poetry, outer topography of The Measure's place is mountains, the edge between prairie and mountain, trees, stones, and the lineaments of winter. So what's new? Well, in most of these poems the sense...