The poetic vision of A Taste of Earth, A Taste of Flame is timeless. It is also a work rooted in the thought of our own era. Though man does not escape his predicament, our own era has perhaps made him more aware than ever before of his destiny. But here the poet's anguish cannot make him blind to the prodigious beauty of a world in which the gods of salvation and redemption are absent. This collection is a superb expression of the intensity of this awareness. And the ultimate happiness that lies in knowing, in awareness is what Daniel Sloate illuminates for us in his poetry.