The Dinosaur Park

Seen through this young poet's eyes, the landscape of Wales is stark, bleak and inhospitable: ""The families paying rent on pit houses,/ The old men packed like fossils into/ Galleries of coal, the laundry-girls and labourers,/ Know their lives as part of the estate.'' ``The Dinosaur Park,'' ``On the Llya Fawr Hoard in the National Museum of Wales,'' and ``A Celtic Grave'' depict Welsh history as ``the worm's empire''a reminder of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death and decay. Minhinnick's dreary, desolate vision reaches its apotheosis in a long poem called ``Breaking Down,'' which recounts the agony of a family member's decline into hopeless and inexplicable mental illness. It is highly accomplished poetry of strong images``jellyfish like crystal bowls in which/ A dark life rots,'' and ``congers hung on chains, ferociously torn,/ Their mouths agape like beaten, senile men.'' January