Much of the content in Philip Booth's [Available Light] is based, we are told on the work of photographers. Black and white? I find light but little color. The verse lines are spare and taut. Subjects include Booth's familiar Maine and New Hampshire landscapes, tidal coasts and sea marshes, snowy winters and late springs; and wife and daughters and constantly the self seeking itself, eluding itself. Sometimes this reader feels like a stranger happening upon a man talking to himself over problems momentous to that man but obscure to the outsider; but still the conversation is handsome, though frequently stark. And sometimes it is all perfectly clear and still stark, as in "Household."… Three lines to the stanza, three syllables to the line, and the clanking monosyllables have the best of it. But the poet is not always in it. (p. 123)