Poets are longitudinal recorders, capturing the contours of the world in words. This is true of Michael Whitt in his latest collection of poetry, “Hawk on Galvez: A Lament,” a monumental work largely written while he was a medical student in Galveston, Texas in the 1960s.
The compendium is a palimpsest, where traces of experiences, both his and others’, are seen simultaneously: a father-and-son trip across Texas in 1964, a Whitmanesque journey down New York…