In Eynsham

This slim volume, emanating from a visit from his native Florida to Oxfordshire, is Lambert’s followup to his 2017 debut poetry book, Heat Seekers, and shows that despite its brevity he still packs, on an emotional level, a punch equal to that of his pugilistic grandfather, pictured on the cover of his original work, skipping easily from lines such as “Life’s not fair/But death is—/is the only thing that is” to “‘Keep cool,”/I say to myself. “You don’t want/to get your ass beat in Shakespeareland.” You want Tennyson or even e.e. cummings, Lambert probably isn’t your man, but look to him for astute observations on the everyday.