I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, precision, and imagination of a high order.

I look and look, / As though I could be saved simply by looking

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

It doesnt seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs.

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

Brilliant. [Lasdun] seems to me certainly among the most gifted, vivid, and deft poets now writing in English, and far better than many who are more famous. His capacities are solidly established; his promise is nearly infinite.