...hailed in many quarters as Canada's leading poet of the time, but this is surprisingly his first publication in this country... Lane's working life was spent labouring, truck driving, boxcar loading and in a sawmill. This, along with his rural upbringing, was a stark background and many of Lane's excellent early poems render it vividly...What is particularly impressive ...is that the scenes of hardship, cruelty even, are always mediated by a strong and redeeming compassion.