Roddy Lumsden's Terrific Melancholy is a book of changes both physical and emotional. It begins with a diverse sequence on that most dubious and folkloric of changes, rebirth into a new life; exploring history's advances - changeless and changeful. Meanwhile, in the lengthy title-poem, an actor's reluctant crush on a younger colleague leads him to look back on life from middle age, while the poet himself does the same in a sequence about his travels in the US.