the text of Halsey's book

I should have added to the previous item some comment on the poems themselves. I’ve written at length about Alan Halsey’s work elsewhere (in Poetry Salzburg #11, Spring 2007: on Not Everything Remotely and Marginalien). Suffice it to say that Lives of the Poets is further evidence of Halsey’s ability to inhabit the work of other writers great and small. He spoke, with reference to Coleridge in particular, of the ‘specific density’ a poet’s work has. These Lives are condensed senses of what the poet’s work exhibits. They are each a kind of masque rather than paraphrase or imitation.