Poetry. WHILE WE'RE HERE signals the debut of a poetry that is startling and simple by turns, taking in the classical world and the contemporary with the rigor and inventiveness of its forms. All of them come./ They've gathered, it seems, because they're the half-formed/ and what is in them is terrible:/ deceit, sloth, greed, even Venus, the goddess of love,/ is terrible because she rides on the centaur's back. WHILE WE'RE HERE has a shapeliness, a concentrated structural coherence, rare at any time. About darkness ... it is itself a book of light. Heartening; a genuine achievement --Frank Bidart.