Dominion

Readers of Haxton's recent The Lay of Eleanor and Irene, a racy mock-philosophical tour de force about modern love and mores, should be delighted if unsurprised to learn that what Haxton can do with the epic form, he can do equally well with the lyric. His poetry is formal enough to establish his authority, but it breathes and talks and is appropriately leavened with a sense of humor. Whether Haxton is writing out of his own life or from a bird's-eye view of the world, his voice rings true and clear. Though many of the poems are set in the writer's native Mississippi, where, for example, he encounters a snake in the henhouse or later is asked by a neighbor to shoot an injured colt, it is fair to say that the book's real subject can be suggested by the titles of two other poems: ""Justice'' and ``Economics.'' Haxton is a star poet. (April)