Collected Poems

Read (1893968), poet, critic, and novelist, is probably best known to American readers as the author of various popularizing books on modern art. His Selected Poetry might serve as a similar overview of modern English poetry. Read began as an imagiste , writing in the sarcastic, precious manner of early Pound. He served in World War I, and two poetic sequences included here, ``Naked Warriors'' and ``The End of a War,'' bear witness to the terrors of that experience, though the conventionality of the work, however avant-garde in its time, makes its interest mainly documentary now. In later years, Read tried out Eliot's symbolism, Auden's personal-cum-political oratory, neo-romanticism, the meditative manner of the Four Quartets , and finally, in the '60s, verbal experimentalism. But however often Read changed styles, the content of his poems remained constant: they are largely taken up with mild political anarchism, philosophical speculation and nostalgia for England's vanishing rural ways. The poet has some typical verbal traits, as well. He likes big abstractions (time, being, life), and his voice tends to slip freely between very high and rather low diction. In spite of some fine lyrics and one notable long poem, ``Moon Farm,'' this book mainly inspires depressed reflection on the minor poetry of the 20th century. (May)