In Mark Irwin makes stunning jumps in imagination to create poetry that is Rilkean in conception and execution, yet speaks to America at the end of the 20th century. Irwin's vision for American is as broad as Walt Whitman's while his language is propelled by changing rhythms, lush music and fresh imagery. As in (BOA Editions, 1996), the poems in deal with a past that is beyond recovery ("before the word had become motor"), a future that is ominous and a present that is uncertain. "Do we belong where we are going," Irwin asks in "Wind," "or where we are?"