UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF CHILDHOOD is a book of poetry and some related prose pieces in which the author faithfully examines the inexplicable circumstances of his childhood. The title poem, a lengthy compilation of hearsay and observations, takes the poet and his main subjects-his parents- through their courtship, the birth of their children and their deaths, many years apart. Among the other fine poems are elegies written for the poets' parents and others which find him confronting his own mortality, at first from afar and then years later, when it is no longer a vague outline.