The main stylistic influence on the New Zealand poet CK Stead isprobably Ezra Pound, from whom he has inherited a delight iniconoclastic adaptations of classical poets. Here's his take onCatullus - "Death, you clever bugger / who would have credited you /with such finesse!" And the sequence "Walking Westward" (1979) is fullof the colloquial rumbustiousness and jarring disjunctions of themiddle Cantos. In the same year, however, Stead also published"Twenty-two Sonnets", combining delicate evocations of domestic lifewith clear and precise meditations on the end of the Vietnam war. Infact, the elusive inventiveness of his writing has always been balancedby more accessible forays. Voices (1990) provides a fascinating take onNew Zealand history. The Black River (2007), the most recent collectionincluded here, has all the ambition, outspokenness and breadth ofreference of Stead's best writing.