Both as a poet and as a draughtsman, Joe Rosenblatt has always been a high-roller. He takes chances, shoots the works, believes with William Blake that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

As a consequence, it is not to Rosenblatt one would turn for measured good taste and studied propriety of form. What you get from Rosenblatt is poetic Russian roulette. When things are going well, you get your head blown off. When they're not, you suffer through the bathos of misfire after misfire.

Unfortunately, everything does not go well with Rosenblatt's [Virgins & Vampires. It] … is a curious mixture of snarly brilliance and sulky anti-climax.

It is, of course, the snarly brilliance that counts.

Rosenblatt is out for big game. His mission as a species of poetic hit-man is to deflower "the virgins of the literary landscape," the academic poetasters who have declined, as...