In reading and reviewing these four books, I reverted to some technical advice on a distinction between blank verse, free verse, and verse where rhyme, half-rhyme and vocal musicality predominate. These four books are generally free verse and invite an apt response from the reader that is open to the distinctive power of this direct poetic voice and what sustains it and can make it brilliant. Some express a more direct inwardness somewhat detached from the perceived world of place, time, event and sensory richness in as much as the focus is on the inward state of the poet’s mind,…