Stephen Romer is unlike any other contemporary poet: the 'Tribute' paid in his long-awaited third collection is divided between homage and exaction. The homage is voluntary and finds several recipients, the exaction only one. Much turns on the question of idealization, experienced as emotional necessity in the face of love, that 'terrible crystallization'. Writing on Romer's earlier work, Thom Gunn remarked on the 'wide range of interests which open up the imagination to mythologies of the mind'. This new book constitutes a powerful amplification of those mythologies. This book is intended for poetry readers, students.