Shallow and not very wide. The Rubicon, Poems and Short Fiction by J.B. Hogan, crosses the stagnant, predictable intellectual waters of conventional thought into a more challenging place-a place that is far less comfortable, much less traditional. There are some 120 poems and twenty plus stories here running the gamut from the personal to the public and from the environment to war. Religion and politics, the two conversational bugbears, find free rein here, as does a Beat sensibility and literary biography in poetic and fictional form. Imagist work, reflections on death and dying, and views of life not bound by geographical limitations highlight this tightly-arranged collection.