In a poem entitled The SelfUnseeing Thomas Hardy describes a scene of exaltation ending with the words quotYet we were looking awayquot Garth Lambert has never wanted to be quotlooking awayquot In this series of poems easy of access but with depths to plumb he turns his gaze on the life of Man and of a man The earlier more descriptive poems inclined toward youthful enthusiasm and worldly beauty already contain short shadows The increasingly philosophic later poems explore the dark shadowy corners of personal life and of the world including the concept of God who seems to be playing a mean game of hideandseek with humankind The poems do this with unflinching honesty but also with humanity and humour and frequent glances into the sunlit spaces between the shadows In the end a positive message filters through as Garth Lambert espouses the primacy of reason over superstition of compassion over indifference and cruelty of nature over humanspecies sprawl of life over death of love over all
