Well observed, careful and shot through with sadness, this eighth set of poems from Ohio resident Baker (Midwest Eclogue
) is his best: syllabic stanzas, occasional rhyme, and short, clear looks at nature frame a life that almost came apart in middle age: we read of the poet's days with his young daughter, and of what appears to be his recent divorce. “When a lark flies/ up, I know its name,” writes Baker—it is no boast: he returns over and over to the natural history of the Midwest, its meadows and exurbs, where “Hummer” means both a tiny bird and a gargantuan vehicle. Baker's daughter's childhood, his own teen years, middle age and approaching death get attention from his exacting eye. And as he looks hard at animals, they look back at him: he sees, in a poem about Virgil, how “the oval eyes/ of goats and sheep/ turn rounder as the day/ goes down.” Like Marianne Moore and Amy Clampitt, this poet likes to borrow from earlier texts: swaths of quotations from 17th-century prose can overwhelm his quiet verse. Yet most of the time Baker's terms remain his own: “To see each thing clear/ is still not to see// a thing apart from/ words or our wild need.” (Oct.)