Elemental Natures draws together thirty years of poetic practice, with substantial selections from six previous books of poetry, including the sequence "No One Comes For Penelope— ", a retelling of the end of the Odyssey that teases the reader with conflicting views of time and reality. The essay, "The American Voice", looks at three iconic American poets, Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers, and Robert Lowell, emphasizing an entirely different viewpoint of what is unique to the American voice in poetry, focusing on its largesse, passion, excess, and ability to recover in confronting and making sense of our lives. His poetry is central to his creative output, work variously called "inspiring" "visionary" "vibrant" "post- Keatsian" "passionate" "unabashed by sensuality and feeling"; "a voice beyond epoch ... but rooted in Los Angeles", dedicated "to the welfare of planet earth", work variously compared to Browning, Auden, and in its freedom, Pablo Neruda.