New Dark Ages is a book of ideas that exhibits a rare quality - adventurousness. The poems are intelligent and deeply felt, complex and crystal clear. Donald Revell writes about things as tender and as complicated as happiness and freedom. His poetry brims with images, wonder, and discovery, as it seeks to answer such questions as :If the original idea of America is defunct, what has taken its place? If privacy is no more, how do we go about the business of loving? If God and history have become one, what is the relationship between morality and expediency?" And, above all, "Why is it that, in spite of all, the twentieth century is so heart-breakingly beautiful - a true vindication of humanism?"