New Penguin Book of English Verse

"[A] thousand pages of the best poetry written in English on this side of the Atlantic.... There's no dead wood, and every unfamiliar poem provokes gratitude that it has been included, rather than the flattened sense of probity that comes with pious quota-filling....But what is particularly pleasant about the book is that, over extended reading, you get a sense of the state of mind that poetry both celebrates and demands: independent, wilful, sensuous and sensual, alive and, even when most miserable or seemingly abstracted, engaged with life. Whether this is a deliberate or unconscious policy of Keegan's, there are rather more poems here that applaud love, sex, drink, and loafing about than Augustan temperance and self-denial, which is great. The book reminds you what poetry is for.Keegan, Paul is the author of 'New Penguin Book of English Verse' with ISBN 9780140586718 and ISBN 0140586717.