These poems of exile and identity are a rendering and confrontation of modern life in poetry that is not ashamed to be poetry. Like his great model, Hart Crane, LeWinter seeks a language in which to capture the modern world and to celebrate its endurance in the midst of chaos. Can there be a more difficult task for any poet in a century which George Orwell so aptly described as a "cesspool full of barbed wire." This may be the reason why so many of LeWinter's most compelling poems deal with war, with death, and with impermanence. In this sequence as well as in the rest, LeWinter's divided nature is everywhere visible, as it is in the story of his life.