Todd Swift's fourth collection, "Winter Tennis" is a passionate appraisal of life by the poet at age forty. By turns elegantly sad and radically witty, the poems move between the wintry wilds of loss and the sun-splashed courts of word play and of language acts keenly observed. Also examined are the facts of our quickly eroding identities-life, love, and death. A series of powerful poems commemorates the poet's companionable father. Others vividly investigate erotic love, the odd marine passions of the Japanese Emperor, and, for its own sake, fine verbal whimsy. Everywhere is the insouciant slosh and splash of language-street level, poised, erudite. Winter Tennis confirms Swift as both an unruly literary rebel and master formalist, nourished by the full vocal range of English-language poetry.