Poetry. In Richard Hoffman's long, complex title poem, which anchors his concerns throughout the book, he says with characteristic lucid candor, '...now when longevity itself begins to seem at once / the only wealth worth having and the booby prize.' It should be noted that NOON UNTIL NIGHT is not a book about noon until evening. Yet the darkness that night suggests has its rays of hope in it, as Hoffman artfully meditates on how we live and, without sentimentality, manage to go on.--Stephen Dunn