To "swither" means to suffer indecision or doubt, but there is no faltering in these poems. Robin Robertson has written a book of remarkable cohesion and range-from raw, exposed poems about the end of childhood to erotically charged lyrics about the ends of desire, from a brilliant retelling of the metamorphosis and death of Actaeon to the final freeing of the waters in "Holding Proteus." At times somber, at times exultant, Robertson's poems are always firmly rooted in the world we see, the life we experience: original, precise, and startlingly clear.
