In a vision which constantly sees the 'doubleness' of people, places and things, Earl McKenzie both confronts such experiences as the discovery that the very same 'farmers/who sing on choirs' are those who became a lynch mob and beat a passing stranger to death, and celebrates the rich variousness of a landscape and a people who 'fear the straight line/for it is as rigid as death'. McKenzie's poems speak directly and without pretension, but in their often quirky observations and ability to find resonant images from the everyday, they are arresting and memorable.