FROM MIMIR'S HEAD comprises two reciprocal passes through the same terrain - a sequence of poems mostly exploring ontological matters in a variety of verse inventions, and a series of notes in a prose equally exploratory and inventive. In both, the quickly shifting diction is at once mercurial and immaculate, theimages vivid and well-ordered, the structures musical and truly spoken, and the thought, if "philosophical," nonetheless sprung from the recognition of the limits of metaphysical discourse. Stein writes: "The philosopher shouldbe discouraged in his metaphysical pretension, but the metaphysician encouraged in his poetic need."