WASTELAND HONEY: POEMS offers to us the living and dying world with which we contend-or to which we surrender. Robert Clinton speaks of the devils who rob the earth, but he makes a place in his verse for the "rose-clean, vigorous, fragrant." Contrasting tempers and riddling parables are framed by rhythms and fluency of diction that achieve a unique formal structure for each poem. WASTELAND HONEY'S arresting and eccentric metaphors linger, like the burning touch of a thistle. "The combination of heart-on-sleeve humanity with linguistic happiness offers the full range of poetic pleasures. Robert Clinton's poems take chances and get away with it. They are the work of a thoroughly sophisticated and original mind." - Linda Bamber, Metropolitan Tang: Poems;