John Swain's Under the Mountain Born collects 100 poems, many of which have appeared in fine little mags and zines. Swain's images like his tenses shift. they are plastic: now ephemeral, suddenly very real and so forth. The result is a steadiness of voice, though the poems greatly vary. The man can write a sentence, i'd say. Generally speaking nature would seem to be at the fore. The star subject of his poems, though, are his thoughts which in wheeling figure-eights convey private takes-chiefly on things like consciousness, conscience, duty, guilt, rapture, protected innocence, sorrow and the role beauty plays in this world.