The fox and I

the long version

This thirteenth collection by Charles Edward Eaton opens with a sequence of poems about his native South, employing, as his second section suggests, both tribal words and civilized eloquence. The Land Rover moves on through a Western panorama of saguaro, tumbleweed, and sunset casino, American motives that celebrate beguiling surfaces subject to faults and unexpected force. One of the most sensuous of writers, Eaton also gives us skin games, the harsh anvil power of sexual passion as well as la vie en rose - a whole studbook of lovers, close up and in overview from a hang glider. Critics have frequently remarked that there is no one in America writing like Eaton. He has followed no school, no cult, no ephemeral fashion. He knows that the poet must go everywhere in relentless adventure and yet come back to base, facing up to the fact that life is A Changing Room at the Brink of Chance where language is the guide through every circumstance - "Ah, says the chary word: Choose me again."