[It might be argued that randomness and] deliberate abdication of selectivity and control are so central to Bissett's aesthetic and life-style that it would seem like a distortion of his vision for him to present a tightly edited, carefully chosen selection….

Nor is it absolutely clear that Bissett at his best does depend on uncontrolled haphazardness. On the contrary, his chants depend on a very strict manipulation of rhythmical effects…. Moreover, in some of his longer satirical poems—I'm thinking especially of "Th' Emergency Ward" and "Killer Whale"—the pretence of the poem's being an unadulterated recital of facts is surely just a pretence. These poems practice a kind of reticence, an ironic understatement, a refusal to comment which is in the end far more effective than any actual comment could have been (especially the rather frenzied political rhetoric that Bissett often indulges in). These poems, with their very studied naivety in accepting all the strange things that happen to him, show Bissett as a master of narrative and ironic tone.

These considerations are very important when approaching Pomes for Yoshi…. In the first place, it is a book with a unified theme: in effect, it is one long sequence of poems in which every piece bears directly on the central [concern with the poet's love for a girl called Yoshi]. (p. 121)

In the love poems, Bissett tackles head on the oldest poetic theme in the world, and he succeeds in giving it a remarkable freshness by the very naivety, directness, and openness with which he treats it. In simple, colloquial language he speaks of how he misses her, and of how he accepts her need to be away from him for a while, even if she's with some other man. Love is not possession, Bissett says, and seldom has this ideal been realised more fully and more convincingly. The poems take the emotional warmth and idealistic romanticism of Bissett's earlier work and manage to focus them on a particular situation, a particular relationship.

The sub-theme, the housemoving, reaches its climax in a long poem at the end of the book…. [The] ostensible form is that of a purely factual narrative of an increasingly fantastic sequence of events. (Bissett appears to be the kind of person that the wildest things just naturally happen to.) But again, the tone is perfectly judged, and the absence of comment becomes a comment in itself. It also produces a hilarious kind of straight-faced humour.

None of this, I think, is accidental. It is a product of Bissett's life-style and aesthetic (the two are almost the same), an openness which seems naive but isn't, an innocence which has gone through experience and out the other side, a purity of outlook which brings freshness to the most outrageously clichéd situations and phrases. Nothing but this consistency of tone could account for the way in which Bissett is able to use such terrible clichés of counter-culture jargon as "Far out", "I can dig it", "Heavy", and "Got to get my shit together" with such complete honesty that the reader accepts them as being meaningful (accurate descriptions of a certain state of mind), amusing (in slyly self-mocking, understated asides), and even deeply moving (see especially the final page of the book).

Such sophisticated manipulations of language may be accidental, or unconscious, but I rather doubt it. Pomes for Yoshi strikes me as a very carefully crafted book, as well as a deeply personal one. (pp. 121-22)