These poems are visceral and evocative reminiscences of growing up in a decaying mill city in the 1940s and 50s. The relatives, the workers, the streets, canals, and old factories of Lowell, Massachusetts live again in Sexton's deft imagination. There are poems of the neighborhood and the family, of his father during hard times collecting scrap metal off the streets, Uncle Paul getting laid off, homages to waitresses and laundry workers, and the tree wherein are carved the names of a season s Boston Red Sox lineup. Many of the poems are sonnets, some free verse, and all show Sexton's eye for the telling detail.