The poems in One More Civil Gesture, the first full collection by C. E. J. Simons, frequently take their subjects from singularities of nature and art - things that are wonderful not because they are unusual or rare, but because they deserve wonder, no matter how familiar: animal life; the seasons; family; myth; well-known Shakespeare plays. They aim, as Geoffrey Hill has said, to restructure banality into beauty without denying the banal. Simons wrote much of the book in Japan, where he has lived since 2006, and in the interstices of frequent travel in Asia, particularly to Burma, China, and...