The Gossip and the Wine offers poems that range from buoyant to ironic and sombre. Many of them are occasioned by biblical moments, which they read afresh. These include the remarkable sequence, 'Rounding a Year', which sees common human patterns in the key points of the Christian year. In general, the works and days of antiquity press claims on a sharply imagined modern world. Peter Steele embraces poetic formality as access to both comprehension and mystery: 'formality may itself be a kind of vivacity, and it is a poet's business to ensure that this is how things turn out'. The 'singing' element is present as both a means and a reward for the relishing of the particular. These poems celebrate the world as trove. Offering an abundance of events and items, they commonly imply that there is much more still to be found, appraised and rejoiced in.