James is an award-winning poet and a Professor of  Literature whose work in this volume demonstrates the kind of art and craft that prompted the following remarks from American Poet Laureate Billy Collins: “James Scruton likes to stand on an observable fact and then reach for something beyond: a bit of science is often all he needs to launch these poems into their appealing orbits. Poet Dick Allen calls Scruton’s work, “meticulously crafted poems…over and over, ordinary things…are transformed.”