‘Throw it away, throw it away’: in Flight Risk, C. E. J. Simons uses lyric forms to explore the shocks and joys of middle age: past relationships, marriage, childbirth, fatherhood, and the consequences of a life devoted to poetry. ‘Uxor’ and ‘Prayer for My Son’ show domestic bliss flourishing in a world that also contains the power relations of ‘Haggard’ and the sexual exploitation of ‘The Liberties, Kabukicho’. Half a dozen imitationes from poets ranging from Wyatt to Yeats show Simons coming to grips with the origins of his own voice. The book concludes with ‘Exclusion Zone’, a stunning four-part poem on Simons’s photojournalism work for the ten-year anniversary of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.