John Steffler was born in Toronto, but his poetic voice ranges far afield in this new collection, his fourth, and first in a decade. From Newfoundland (where he now lives) to southern Ontario and Greece, Steffler exploits his considerable talents for imagery as he sweeps his readers along on a rollicking journey through a variety of physical and emotional landscapes.

Each of the book’s four sections celebrates the poet’s intense love-affair with his own sensual responses to the natural world. Employing a free-verse lyric, occasionally interrupted by a prose-poem, Steffler immerses himself in elemental forces. The sea, the sun, the moon, the earth, the rain: poem after poem explores the poet’s relationship to these basic subjects. “In The First Week Of June,” for example, ends with this wonderfully evocative vision of trees in a rainstorm: “the naked bride poplars trying on green/earrings, pearls.”

Steffler also turns his sharp eye on the human landscape, considering such topics as familial and romantic love, memory, and travel within other cultures. Whether he’s describing his teenaged son’s working life (“Work”) or recounting a bus ride through the streets of a Greek village (“Vivlos”), the poet never veers from his belief that life is one big invitation to experience. His good nature, evident on every page, is refreshing.

However, despite all of Steffler’s undeniable skill, only a few of these 69 poems are truly memorable. The collection could be shortened considerably, as much of the writing (“Borrowed Home,” “How Do I Know This?”) remains flat, the lines indistinguishable from prose sentences. Steffler constructs his best poems by heaping image upon image, but this method eventually wears thin. Imagery alone does not a poem make; there must also be a hard structure, a socket to fix the eye. Only “For My Execution,” “Eclipse,” “Cedar Cove,” and a few others seem essential. It is hard to imagine memorizing most of these poems; generally entertaining, they lack the technical force that makes poetry resonate for readers long after they’ve looked away from the page.

Nevertheless, Steffler daubs enough nice touches on his large canvas to convey a winning sense of the world as an inviting and vibrant place.