Paul Carter's intuition that space is history has distinguished his cultural writing, public art and radiophonic scripting. In his first full length volume of poems, a celebrated debut, we encounter a startling overlay of immemorial myth and ephemeral urban encounter. Spirits of the classical world jostle with the sensory stimuli of contemporary domestic life. Desire tours a terrain of abysses. The poems of Ecstacies and Elegies are as engaging and virtuosic in their range of styles as they are generous in their imagery.