Poetry at Present

Excerpt from Poetry at Present <p>In order to keep it unanswerable, the work of the poets has been confined to their poetry; other books, novels, or studies in battle, travel, or politics, or sor cery, or criticism have been left on one side. Poetry, and poetry alone, is the present business with the poets. The short bio-bibliographies supplied give (where possible) the main dates of publication, but do not, of course, profess to be complete. The poets have gone on publishing while these comments were at the press; the most important of those new books has been the Poet Laureate's Testament of Beauty. Had Wordsworth published the Prelude while he held the office the later poem would have had a rival as a Laureate s work. A first reading of it suggests that, though nothing can be added, there is, fortunately, no need to alter or remove anything here. <p>My gratitude is due to the friends, at Amen House and elsewhere, who have discussed the essays with me; to Mr. J. G. Wilson (for many kindnesses), and to my wife for providing time in which they could be written. <p>About the Publisher <p>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com <p>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.