Every book of poems is to some degree a selection, unless it’s a record of work and gets down among discarded drafts. Anthony Turner’s unpromisingly-titled first book (Musings: A collection of poems, 1965-1977, Hawthorn Press, $4.50 pb, 74 pp) needs so much more editing that it was an unwise venture into covers.

Noting against poems ‘oldie’, ‘exercise’, and worse, I found interest in maybe five or six. ‘The Cloning Machine’ is neat, and there’s decent feeling in ‘News-vendor’. But a poet is accountable in 1978 for what he publishes in 1978, and ‘Hasten the Day’, for instance, is a damning inclusion. Turner might be worth reading if the brief ‘Detour’ had been on, not off, his customary route.