lie. Life is flowing away from him in all directions. The moment is empty, and unavoidable" ("Writing Poems" 21). he first ten poems in the book, all gloomy ones, have a long, proselike line--no light bouncing rhythms of youth here. It is a sombre march, apparently to the grave, with a few too many abstract nouns and not enough concrete images. loating Bridge," the second part of the book, continues in the same vein. "Spring" (33) finds Norris out of tune with the happy season and in "A Question of Time" (39), the alienation is of a cosmic magnitude: "The universe doesn't care; it has its order/and/we are only noise in the street./We check our watches, and depart." The poem was written on New Year's day 1986: not an auspicious beginning to the year. et this section is more positive than the last. The consolation comes from art. If life has nothing to offer, then there is poetry, a refuge from the decay that life inflicts. Andre Dawson can have bad knees and end up playing for those eternal losers the Chicago Cubs, but in The poem that bears his name (37) he is young forever, like a figure on Keats' Grecian urn. But Norris is still not sure that art is preferable to life, or that it is acceptable to find refuge from life in art. "The Drama of the heart's Debate with Actuality" (45) lashes out at the notion of art as escapism: "We know the world, but it is not the world/we desire...We are overly dramatic,/create high tragedy/where there is only life." We do not desire the world? Or the world we have is not the one we desire? I favour the latter reading. he title of part three, "Crossroads," suggests an occasion for decision. But most of the poems in the section are a part of the debate and not its resolution. In "The Poems Still