Reading The Visitants, I was struck by the absence of something I couldn't exactly place: some quality, some attitude that these 40 poems simply didn't contain. Anger? Sorrow? Bitterness? No, because in a few public lyrics, a few civil elegies, Miriam Waddington does express these dark emotions. What was it, this absence? It took me a while to realize that I was missing all sense of fear, and that The Visitants is a fearless book. Its main preoccupations are death, old age, and solitude—all of which are usually tackled with regret, unease, or the kind of boisterous swagger that seems a poor disguise for fear. But Waddington is undaunted at the prospect of death, and unafraid of direct feeling. She can, in consequence, write with warmth about the cold.

The rich texture of her language arises partly from another sort of courage. When the mood and the occasion...