Collected Poems Book

The lifework of one of the 20th century's greatest poets Since her first collection of poems published in 1943, Kathleen Raine has been writing a kind of mystical nature poetry all her own, a poetry immersed in the quiet air of solitude and imagination. Vita Sackville-West, writing in the Observer, spoke of her "curious purity": "Her poems are like drops of water, clear, self-contained, and sometimes iridescent with the elusive colors of mysticism." Collected Poems is the lifework of a visionary, a celebration of the miracles of nature and man's place among them. Now in her ninety-second year she has chosen this work from eleven published collections and from other uncollected and unpublished sources. The earliest poems were written in the mid-thirties, the latest in the late nineties. "Miss Raine is in nature, as simply as a shell on a shore or a bird in a tree. . .When her nicety of observation (and she can observe as closely as a professional naturalist) coincides with a deep level of feeling, her poems fuse spirit and substance in a remarkable way." -Louise BoganRead More