The poems have a lot of fun finding new meanings in old themes, from fairytales to Shakespeare. The images are arresting and always surprising. But the poems here are about more than style. The mind goes wild. Old images recur.
Sex pops up repeatedly.
Words bring on more words, images free-associate to other images, and a mood of tension builds. The first part of the book gets us deeper and deeper into the dark labyrinth of sleep. The second part is a series of increasingly wild dreamscapes. And the third section sorts things out a bit, becoming more accessible to reason, and yet is no less thought-provoking. It's remarkable that Cow'sleap is the product of nearly forty years of writing.