The taut, gnomic line that characterized much of [Creeley's] previous work is now gentled, smoothed [in Later]—but just as wondrous in its new form as the old. Creeley's verse has undergone a transmutation both subtle and awesome….

The material of these poems is love—as Creeley's material so often has been—a love that has survived and mellowed, not sentimentally, but in a richer, more possible way. (p. 57)

Creeley's verse was always loaded, crammed into a small space. These lines seem even shorter, and the grammar simpler, as if the poet had finally resolved some essential dilemmas, finally arrived at some conclusions. "Thought's random torture" is what he's always been about; now he has indeed learned to "simply live." That he chooses to open the book with an inscription from the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh that enjoins us to "hold in mind/all that has loved you or been kind" is significant. It is as if he is saying it is time now for him to forget the intense inner debates that energized the early work, and pay some attention to those that are outside.

This is a splendid idea, and it makes a splendid book from one who is without question a major voice. The wars go on in that weird little world where poets live or die by college jobs and literary magazines, but Creeley stands above and apart, writing poems. There were those who worried he had burned out … but this book evinces a life and a perception that is rarely found in any time, no less ours. Creeley is alive and well and writing, and the poems continue to sing to us. (pp. 57-8)