THE title poem, The Tree Trimmed into a Flagpole was a fluke of observation. It was written, the poet says, long before any reforming movement to persuade us to care what to believe, and what lies about us and beyond. Kenneth Ellis's work is a blend of the poet in landscape and seascape, struggling to the interior of himself and back again. The poems start by the sea and move inland to the person and his people and places, wandering among the known and unknown. He was among the first to write poems in praise of pop songs as an aid to retrieving precious memories of time and place. Part of the collection is a young man's impressions of a great capital city in the immediate past (London Doodles). The Tree Trimmed into a Flagpole and other poems includes Kenneth Ellis's own introduction.