Peter Robinson, from England, is a professor at Tohoku University as well as an anthologist and critic. His poetry is tentative, reflective and analytic. In keeping with the tradition of such scholar-poets, he offers gentle and thoughtful explorations, rather than verbal pyrotechnics. His is a poetry that relishes silence, and expects the reader to listen closely.
Scott Watson, the American, is a somewhat different writer. Also teaching in a university, he actively organizes poetry readings and events in the northern city that both he and Robinson inhabit. Watson's book comes from a press that he operates himself. His poetry impresses the reader with its urgency, and is intensely concerned with moral questions, and with living in the here and now. Where Robinson ponders, Watson is more insistent.
If, as Socrates asserted, the unreflected life is not worth living, then both these poets are doing full duty as witnesses and thinkers. Robinson is chatty and informal ("Anywhere You Like" and "About Time Too" are recent titles), whereas Watson, like his Beat forebears, is experimental and more clearly has a message. Both books divide into six sections, Watson's covering a decade, and Robinson's a quarter-century, of the respective poet's work.