When Weirton Steel was powerful and pouredColumns of smoke and fumes into the airNorth of Martins Ferry in the valleyAnd orange water tumbled from its sluicesInto an umber river far belowI was a boy.--Sonnet I, lines 1-6The one hundred sonnets in this volume carry us beyond the author's boyhood into a voyage of adult concerns but also playfulness, love of art, and intimations of Paradise. They affirm in many ways a nobility Wallace Stevens thought was hard to find in contemporary poetry.