When I read Philip Booth's Letter from a Distant Land several years ago, I thought and still think that its title poem was a beautiful and powerful achievement. I therefore came to his new book, The Islanders, with a sense of muted expectation, and I was not disappointed. Booth is still a good craftsman with a Frost-like love for New England and New Englanders (mostly from Maine) that give him his subject matter. And he has a sense of humor that is perfectly suited to the accomplished abandon of his style; this is especially effective in "Was a Man," "Mores" and "Spit." But the real strength of this book grows out of poems like "Maine," "Boulder," "Jake's Wharf," "The Anchor," "Propellor" and a haunting poem called "Sable Island." He sees the music in things like "ships' bones," the "trick back" of a seal, an owl "hooing the cold," and he conveys this music simply, truthfully and with all the sensitivity of what Sir Philip Sidney once called a "right poet." (pp. 346-47)