The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (Hardcover, Reissue)

As a journalist working for the BBC World Service, with its voracious appetite for news from India, I had little time to read anything. Poetry suffered most. Now that I'm no longer in the hot seat but presenting 'Something Understood' on Radio 4, I have returned to poetry and I am realizing what I have missed all these years. It seems unfair to be paid for working on a programme which is an anthology of poetry, literature and music. During the research I make copious use of anthologies and it's hard to pick one out of many excellent collections, but having to make a choice I selected this one, perhaps because it introduced me to a Betjeman poem I had never read before. The poem 'Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order', recalls for me the courage of those who, at the end of lives blessed by the God they have served with no apparent success, can still say 'my heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in thee'. Review by Mark Tully (Kirkus UK)

Philip Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse provoked controversy and dispute on first publication in 1973. Warmly welcomed by fellow poets John Betjeman and W. H. Auden, it was also considered a quirky and idiosyncratic collection by some critics. Today it is recognized as a fine and wide-ranging selection of modern English verse.

The successor to W. B. Yeats's Oxford Book of Modern Verse, Larkin's collection radically re-assessed the century's achievement in poetry, introducing many less well-known poets among the acknowledged greats. As Larkin writes in his Preface, in choosing poems rather than individuals he has brought together `poems that will give pleasure to their readers both separately and as a collection'.

For this latest reissue, the poet's biographer Andrew Motion has written a new Foreword in which he considers the nature of Larkin as editor.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Oxford Books of Verse
Release date:	March 1972
First published:	March 1973
Editors:	Philip Larkin
Foreword by:	Andrew Motion
Dimensions:	222 x 135 x 34mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	654
Edition:	Reissue
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-812137-4
Categories:	Books
LSN:	0-19-812137-7
Barcode:	9780198121374

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