A collection of contemporary and classic poems chosen by children from schools around the UK.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "Death, be not proud," "The Raven," "The Road Not Taken," plus works by Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, many others. Includes 13 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. But now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection from across the entire arc of his poetry, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers.

100 Poems to Save the Earth is a concise, eclectic and engaging anthology of poems in English addressing the climate crisis, edited by poets and enviromentalists Zoe Brigley and Kristian Evans and including poems from America, UK, Ireland and beyond, such as Roger Robinson, Rhian Edwards, Tishani Doshi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and George Szirtes.

A series highlighting the works commended annually for the prestigious Forward Prizes. It brings together the best poems published over a quarter century in twenty-five editions of the Forward books of poetry. It includes both familiar names - Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, Derek Walcott - and fresh voices - Kate Tempest, Kei Miller and Emily Berry.

Poets have been fascinated and challenged by the sonnet ever since it was imported from Italy to England in the sixteenth century. This title presents both a sharing of personal favourites and a celebration of high moments in the sonnet's history.

The First World War holds a unique place in the nation's history; the poetry it produced, a unique place in the nation's hearts. This title can hold a special place in your affections, as it remembers and recalls through its commissioned work, renews and honours - the engagement between poetry and this terrible, unworldly of world conflicts.

The First World War holds a unique place in the nation's history; the poetry it produced, a unique place in the nation's hearts. To mark the centenary of the First World War in 2014, the author has engaged the most eminent poets to choose the writing from the Great War that touched them most profoundly. This book presents their choices.

This book is Craig Raine's version of Racine's "Andromaque". The inverted commas around the title indicate that Raine's play is not set in an historical 1953, but in a parallel universe where history has been as radically re-written as Racine's text. The author's poetry books include "Rich".

365 Poems for Life is an uplifting poem-a-day collection to nourish your mind and soothe your soul, featuring work by the world's most beloved classic and contemporary poets.

Addressed to children, friends and enemies, the living and the dead, musicians, poets and dogs, this title features poems that display an ambition in their scope and tonal range matched by the breadth of their concerns.

From the presenter of the Poetry Unbound podcast comes an illuminating anthology exploring human connection through 44 poems

A hilarious and brilliant poetry collection from bestselling poet and Twitter laureate, Brian Bilston.

'The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second;

For all who appreciate great poetry, one of the world's best-loved Christian writers and poets reflects on 100 of his favourite poems and why they have the power to change us.

An enchanting new Christmas poem from Carol Ann Duffy, former Poet Laureate, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations from Vivien Mildenberger.

A collection of new and recently completed poems by Ben Okri covering topics of the day, such as the refugee crisis, racism, Obama, the Grenfell Tower fire, and the Corona outbreak.

A Ligature for Black Bodies attempts to re-humanize black bodies into black people by holding the power structures and people accountable who have reified a dominant and destructive discourse.

A handsome tome of dark poetry to feed the fans of all things macabre, gothic, and weird.

Funny and thought-provoking answers to curious questions ... in poetry form!

A sequence of poems inspired by the incredible 7th-century voyage of Irish hermit monks from the island of Iona to the wild, unknown shores of Iceland.

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION Jack Underwood's debut collection, Happiness (2015), was celebrated for its unconventional and daring tone: 'conversational, arresting .

Accidental Fruit is a collection of poems about the perpetual interweaving of childhood and age. It deals with momentous life and death issues, but is equally preoccupied with tiny quotidian details and absurdities.

A selection of poetry by W G Sebald. It brings together poems from throughout W G Sebald's life as well as additional works found after his death. It is arranged chronologically, from his student days in the 1960s to the longer narratives he worked on in the 1980s.

The debut collection of poetry by Gboyega Odubanjo.

A beautiful festive gift from the award-winning poet, Carol Ann Duffy, with captivating illustrations from Yelena Bryksenkov.

Poetry Book Society Special Commendation The Independent 50 Best Summer Reads Welcome to a strange new world in which a poem can be written using only one vowel, processed through computer code, collaged from film trailers, compiled from Facebook status updates, hidden inside a Sudoku puzzle, and even painted on sheep to demonstrate Quantum T

Inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, the Aeneid is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil took Aeneas as his hero and in telling a story of dispossession and defeat, love and war, he portrayed human life in all its nobility and suffering.

A story of arms and heroism that follows the adventures of Aeneas, who flees the ashes of Troy to embark upon a tortuous course that brings him to Italy and fulfills his destiny as founder of the Roman people.

Frederick Ahl's new translation captures the excitement, poetic energy, and intellectual force of Virgil's epic poem in a way that has never been done before. Echoing the Virgilian hexameter the verse stays almost line for line with the original in a thrillingly accurate and engaging style.

This translation captures the excitement, poetic energy, and intellectual force of Virgil's epic poem, 'The Aeneid'.

In Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, the author acknowledged the importance of the poem to his writing, noting that 'there's one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence, and that is Aeneas' venture into the underworld. In this book, he brings the ancient poem back to life.

In a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld.

A translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, that follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld.

Focusing on the conflict between man and nature, this book, in each of its three distinct parts, gives centre stage to a different character from a different century - the last being W G Sebald himself.

These poems range in material from intimate narratives to social commentary. Boyle takes self-deception, mixed motives and honest misunderstandings as the norms of human behaviour, and delights in the comedy of errors that results.

In the "Poet to Poet" series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and their critical reactions, the selectors offer intriguing insights into their own work. Here, Mick Imlah selects Tennyson.

All Cornwall Thunders at My Door is the first biography of Charles Causley to be published some 10 years after his death in 2003. Laurence Green reveals much about Causley's life in Cornwall and beyond, of his personal history, influences and motivations, helping to give context to the legacy left to us by "the greatest poet laureate we never had."

Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer's formative years - from tax problems to probation to American tours, football to family to running away to Iceland - this title explores growing up and being Northern.

All The Men I Never Married is the highly anticipated second collection by Kim Moore. The author portrays relationships with a passionate realism that encompasses complicity and ambiguity, violence and tenderness, and an understanding of the layers of complexity and complicity that exist between men and women.

Building on his award-winning debut collection, The Perseverance, All the Names Given is a collection of intimate, deeply personal poems flickering with gods and ghosts, and the painful electricity that runs up and down the wires of lineage and inheritance.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a poet-teacher father and Russian emigre mother. When "Howl and Other Poems" was impounded by San Francisco customs in 1956, the subsequent trial for obscenity catapulted Ginsberg and his publisher City Lights to national fame and helped to define the Beat Generation.

A selection of new and revised essays from eminent scholar and critic Professor Christopher Ricks.

In this new collection of poetry, the acclaimed gay Latino physician author Rafael Campo continues his nuanced examination of the primal relationship between language, empathy, and healing.

Caroline Bird's new collection charts marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery: the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness, after the happy ending.

"Americana" brings together 58 poems, split into four sections: America, its cities and aeroplanes; the poet's life, his childhood, birthdays and ailments; foreign travel, to Europe and the tropics; and daily life, its furniture and consolations.

An extraordinary debut, book-length poem from a significant young thinker on migratory histories, race and colonialism.

Presents an account of the author's time travelling alone and living among the Shia and Ismaili Muslims in the Northern Areas - the mountainous regions wedged between Afghanistan, India and China and one of the most volatile borderlands in the world.

amuk sheds light on the devastating and ongoing effects of a single word's mistranslation, and emphasises what exists in opposition to such hostile histories and presents: hope, resistance, and joy.

Celebrate animals with this daily anthology of poetry with one entry for every day of the year. From well-known classics to modern fresh takes, An Animal Poem for Every Day of the Year brings to life a huge range of our animal counterparts.

A brilliantly funny seasonal treat for bestselling poet Brian Bilston's loyal fans and newcomers alike.

A new edition and translation of the Old English poem 'Andreas', with full introduction, notes, and glossary.

In her first collection of new poetry since 2011's acclaimed Family Values, Wendy Cope celebrates 'the half-forgotten stories of our lives' with compassion, wisdom and wit.

More than seventy poets are represented in this innovative new anthology of African American poetry since the 1960s.

Some of his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in their original form, including the text of two poems in particular - 'Spain 1937' and 'September 1,1939' - that he later altered or repudiated. This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber's publishing over the decades.

Another Way to Split Water is the debut collection from Edwin Morgan Poetry Award winner Alycia Pirmohamed. This collection employs figurations of the natural world to reflect on themes of language, distance, migration, belonging, faith, grief, and intimacy.

Maths, science, retro arcade games, and what it feels like to be stood up in a restaurant by an entire poetry society. Dan Simpson considers them all and more in his first collection.

The Arabic poetic legacy is as vast as it is deep, spanning a period of fifteen centuries in regions from Morocco to Iraq. Poets include the legendary pre-Islamic warrior 'Antara Ibn Shaddad, medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Zaydun, the wandering poet Al-A'sha, and the influential Egyptian Romantic Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi.

Features poems such as 'Lady Lazarus', 'Daddy', 'Edge' and 'Paralytic', which were all written between the publication in 1960 of Sylvia Plath's first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963.

Contains many of Sylvia Plath's best-known poems, written in an extraordinary burst of creativity just before her death in 1963. This title includes poems such as 'Lady Lazarus', 'Edge', 'Daddy' and 'Paralytic'.

Ariel remains essential, inspirational reading for every aspiring poet

Upon the publication of her posthumous volume of poetry Ariel in 1965, Sylvia Plath became a household name. Readers may be surprised to learn that the draft of Ariel left behind by Plath when she died in 1963 is different from the volume of poetry eventually published to worldwide acclaim. This is a facsimile edition of her original draft.

Illustrated Poems for Christmas.

The Armistice of 1918 brought ceasefire to the war on the Western Front, but 'the Great War' would not as hoped be 'the war to end all wars'.

This debut collection from a shortlistee for the 2018 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem is a contentious love letter to a flawed world.

Sonia Overall is a novelist, poet and lecturer based in Kent. The Art of Walking is a collection of responses to movement and place, reflecting the writer's interest in the relationship between walking and creativity, self and setting.

There may be a stronger strain of melancholy than before (the death of a regular in the local pub; the news that a daughter might be moving abroad), as well as a distinct sense of menace, small but insistent, which inhabits many of the poems. This title is a book of poems that shows the author's writing as fluently and inventively as ever.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe's spellbinding debut poetry collection explores love and the wounds it makes. From 'stunning' and 'paralysing' to 'killing' and 'destroying', each arrow has its own effect on some body - a very real, contemporary body - and its particular journey of love.

A novel that tells the story of the making of a woman poet, exploring 'the woman question', art and its relation to politics and social oppression. This volume contains poetry from the several volumes of the author's published poetry from 1826 to 1862, including "Casa Guidi Windows" (1851), "Songs for the Ragged Schools of London" (1854) and more.

Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer.

Narrative poetry sequence collection

The "disappearance" of the poet Rosemary Tonks in the 1970s was one of the literary world's most tantalising mysteries. All her published poetry is now available here for the first time in over 40 years, along with a selection of her prose. This second edition has an expanded introduction and an additional prose piece.

This poetry collection is the sequel to 'Staying Alive'.

Describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior. This book opens with an introduction to "Beowulf" and the critical debates surrounding it. The poem itself is presented with footnotes. A selection of related poetry, an illustrated chapter on Anglo-Saxon archaeology, and a full glossary are also included.

Beowulf is the longest and finest literary work to have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and one of the world's greatest epic poems. This acclaimed translation is complemented by a critical introduction and substantial editorial apparatus.

Composed between the seventh and tenth centuries, this work is the narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. It is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and living on in the exhausted aftermath.

Composed towards the end of the first millennium of our era, the Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" is a Northern epic and a classic of European literature. In this new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work that is true, line by line, to the original poem.

Tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland.

The story of Beowulf was written down eleven centuries ago. It is an enduring myth that has inspired storytellers in all genres from poetry to film to comic strips. Here it is retold powerfully for children with incredible illustrations from Charles Keeping.

Beowulf is a unique and compelling mix of sixth-century historical events, Christian commentary, Germanic myth and Anglo-Saxon culture. The poem is presented here in a dual-text format with a new translation by multi-award-winning translator J.G. Nichols. " Also contains notes and extra material.

Beowulf is much more than a poem.

The Best British Poetry presents the finest and most engaging poems found in literary magazines and webzines over the past year. The material gathered represents the rich variety of current UK poetry. Each poem is accompanied by a note by the poet explaining the inspiration for the poem.

A delightful anthology of Betjeman's greatest poetry and prose

A comprehensive anthology of best-loved verse for all ages, beautifully illustrated by Isabelle Brent.

Presenting a sketch of its author's troubled life and opinions as the context for a series of virtuoso reflections on contemporary poetry and criticism, the "Biographis" embodies the Romantic quest for the unifying Imagination. This study edition contains both the text and a commentary upon it.

Describes a circular journey in a sequence of 25 poems. In this title, twelve poems chart the outward journey, the thirteenth is pivotal, and twelve poems bring the traveler back. It is an adventure of discovery and disillusionment, during which the figure of death, as companion, mentor and guide, appears along the way, and in various guises.

Features letters that are addressed, with just two exceptions, to Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom the author was married. This book became an instant bestseller on its publication in 1998 and won the Forward Prize for Poetry in the same year.

The moving, expansive, and dazzling second collection from award-winning poet Kayo Chingonyi A Blood Condition tells a story of inheritance - the people, places, cultures and memories that form us.

This epoch-marking anthology presents a map of poetry from Britain and Ireland which readers can follow. Edna Longley shows the key poets of the century, and through interlinking commentary points out the connections between them. Poets include Yeats, Hardy, Graves, Eliot, W H Auden, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and others

New collection of poems by one of Britain's Next Generation Poets

Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, brings new perspectives and energy to a timeless poetic subject. Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholy disappearance.

The first major collection of poetry written in English by the flabbergasting and flamboyant Baroness Elsa, "the first American Dada."

Debut poetry collection by Azad Sharma, exploring drug addiction, relapse and recovery.

The latest poetry collection from the prize-winning Kathleen Jamie.

Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter. This collection of his poetry was written in Montreal, Mumbai and during his retirement in Mt Baldy.

Losing none of the exuberance which has become a hallmark of Simon Armitage's poetry, these poems are more personal. The book is divided into three sections - the "Book of Matches" which are sonnets, "Becoming of Age" and "Reading the Bans", a series of poems about Armitage's marriage.

Edward Lear, the 20th child of a London stockbroker, entered the household of Lord Stanley as little more than a servant, but his sense of humour soon made him welcome above stairs and he began to amuse the children with comic drawings and rhymes. This book was first published in 1846.

more recent luminaries include Brecht, Cavafy, Gabriela Mistral, Dylan Thomas, Iku Takenaka, Pablo Neruda, Wislawa Szymborska, Anne Stevenson, Maya Angelou, Derek Walcott, John Burnside and Ian McMillan.

A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award Winner Just Kids.

A poetry collection which encompasses subjects as diverse as World War I and the author's trip up the Amazon, as well as love poems and tributes to other poets, notably Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and Joseph Brodsky.

Basil Bunting is one of the most important British poets of the 20th century. This title includes a CD with an audio recording Bunting made of "Briggflatts" in 1967 and a DVD of Peter Bell's 1982 film portrait of Bunting.

This keenly anticipated new collection from the Costa Poetry Award-winner speaks 'out of fear and grief into splendour and joy'.

This collection, which contains all his most memorable works and a selection of his letters, is a feast for the senses, displaying Keats' gift for gorgeous imagery and sensuous language, his passionate devotion to beauty, as well as some of the most moving love poetry ever written.

Explores the impact of the first wave of mass migration to our shores, the Arab Spring, the allure of extremism along with a series of personal poems about the pressures of growing up in a traditional community. This book asks profound questions of our ethics and responsibilities at a time of great challenge to our sense of national identity.

A dual-authored volume of poems from the multi-award winning Dickman twins, which they wrote when their older sibling tragically took his own life. It features moving, grieving but life-affirming poems.

The author's poetry ranges in manner from sombre reflections on the loneliness and bestiality of human experience to the exuberance shown in his persuasive fantasy of Guinness's Brewery considered as the Garden of Eden.

A major new biography of the most modern and the most underrated of English literature's great Victorians.

Given that insects vastly outnumber us (there are approximately 200 million insects for every human) it is no surprise that there is a rich body of verse on the creeping, scuttling, flitting, stinging things with which we share our planet.

An iconoclastic exploration of the life of Lord Byron, viewed through the prism of the lives of nine women with whom he was intimately associated.

Part-memoir, part-conjecture, Joelle Taylor investigates sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate.

An essential introduction and handbook for students and other readers of T. S. Eliot.

This introduction delves behind the myth of Emily Dickinson to present her in the context of her time.

A beautiful debut collection from Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair that draws on our colonial history and speaks powerfully to our present moment.

The complete works of Robert Burns

The father of English literature shines in this authoritative selection from the greatest collection of narrative poems in the English language. Includes footnotes, normalized spelling, and a glossary of Middle English. Reissue.

Offers us a glimpse into the life and mind of Medieval England. This is a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce.

This reading of "The Canterbury Tales" is in contempoarary English prose to appeal to the student and general reader alike. It tells the story of a pilgrimage to Canterbury in which men and women drawn from all classes of society lighten their journey by telling tales.

Offers a collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This book includes tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.

From the exuberant Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend to the Miller's worldly, ribald farce, this title includes tales which can be taken as a mirror of fourteenth-century London.

These tales bring together a band of pilgrims who represented most of the occupations and social groups of the time. The diversity of the narrators in turn made possible a varied collection of tales including chivalric romance, spiritual allegory, courtly lay, beast fable and literary satire.

This is one of the very best anthologies of poetry to come out of the Vietnam War. The poets here have given their experiences an energy that transcends time and grabs your heart. Read these poems and know that you will never be the same.

Tests the proximities of elsewhere, 'the circle round our house', the road between two lives. This title presents explorations of light and the borders of vision, which include a journey to the four corners of Britain to observe the solstices and equinoxes, and a cycle about the East Anglian landscape which is nine-tenths sky.

Winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category. Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, poetry category.Finalist for the 2015 NAACP Image Awards in Poetry.

Modern Poetry in Translation is one of the UK's most innovative and prestigious poetry magazines, founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort.

In this enchanting illustrated adaptation, Cerys Matthews brings Dylan Thomas's beloved classic to new life. This is a bedtime story like no other; a book to be treasured by many generations; a book for babies and old men alike, for all that are young at heart

A piercing debut about how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves.

Original woodcut depictions were first published in 1483, and since it was only 83 years after Chaucer's death, we can regard them as highly authentic.

Cherry Cola focuses on a girl and a boy's unfiltered relationship; giving a voice to both narratives and their individual internal struggles. The poetry centres around the journey of falling in love and it's aftermath.

Contains the old English texts of all the major short poems. This anthology provides a window into the mind and culture of the Anglo-Saxons.

Contains the Old English texts of almost all the major short poems, such as "The Battle of Maldon", "The Dream of the Rood", "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer". These poems are the wellspring of the English poetic tradition, and this anthology provides a window into the mind and culture of the Anglo-Saxons.

In this moving sequence of poems Nicola Davies's text combines with the superbly evocative illustrations of Petr Horacek to provide insight into the real-life experiences of refugees forced to leave their homes and previous lives behind to face an unknown future.

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was born in London and educated at home, where she took up writing from an early age. Her most famous collection, "Goblin Market and Other Poems", appeared in 1862. This title provides an introduction to this one of the greatest poets of our literature.

An enchanting Christmas poem from Carol Ann Duffy, complete with gorgeous illustrations from Margaux Carpentier.

This beautifully illustrated collection brings together, for the first time, Carol Ann Duffy's much-celebrated festive poems.

For more than thirty years Wendy Cope has been one of the nation's most popular and respected poets. Christmas Poems collects together her best festive poems, including anthology favourites such as 'The Christmas Life', together with new and previously unpublished work.

Offers a variety of lyrics, love poems and elegies, in which private domains of feeling infer other lives and a shared humanity - exploring how people cope with threats to and in the world around them, as soldiers, lovers, artists, writers and citizens. This title includes poems about the last surviving veteran of the trenches.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2015 and National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry 2015, this book examines the experience of race and racism in Western society through sharp vignettes of everyday discrimination and prejudice, which has impacted the lives of Serena Williams, Zinedine Zidane, Mark Duggan and others.

Susan Wicks's "Driving My Father" was a prose memoir/meditation in which she described her complicated feelings for her parents and their own poignant relationship. Many of the themes and incidents covered in that book are presented again here, but this time as a collection of poetry.

From his home in a West Yorkshire village proverbially associated with cuckoos, Simon Armitage has been probing the night sky with the aid of a powerful Russian telescope.

A modern verse play about the search for meaning, in which a psychiatrist is the catalyst for the action. An authentic modern masterpiece (New York Post). Eliot really does portray real-seeming characters. He cuts down his poetic effects to the minimum, and then finally rewards us with most beautiful poetry (Stephen Spender).

Includes such poetic works as: "Paid on Both Sides", "Letter to Lord Byron", "For the Time Being", "The Sea and the Mirror", and "The Age of Anxiety".

This bilingual edition provides all of Rimbaud's poems, with the exception of his Latin verses and some small fragments. It also includes some of his prose pieces, chosen because they offer a commentary on his poetic concerns.