The poems in "Poems for a Winter Afternoon" emerge from a winter landscape in literal and figurative senses. However, the landscape isn't barren tundra. Meighan conjures as much as creates a landscape rich in imagery, allusion, and emotion as the poet addresses the pain of exile, the meditation of the solitary figure, the warmth of communion with friends around a 19th-century tavern fireplace or at a modern diner counter. The setting varies from the present-day city street to lonely woods and meadows and extends geographically and thematically to the Russian Steppe of the poets whose music influenced this book. To read "Poems for a Winter Afternoon" is to explore a landscape that should strike the reader as simultaneously mysterious and familiar as well as exhilarating.