Kim Rooney, www.hagsharlotsheroines.com, January 2006:

There is a sense of a circle completed about this anthology. For intimate companions who were often present (in each poet's head if not by their desk) when words were first shaped into poems, have fashioned a unique resting place for those lines.

They have been aided by Anthony Astbury of the legendary Greville Press who "suddenly wondered one day why on earth there were no selections made by poets' wives or muses - and how wonderful it would be to have, say, Mrs Shakespeare's or Mrs Wordsworth's choices..." So he invited 'muses' or close family members to pick out their own jewels in the crown: those poems that stood out as emblematic. The selections for these thirteen poets were originally published between the brightly coloured covers of Greville press pamphlets. This format contained black and white photographs of poet and muse together, alongside a brief foreword often by the muse. All has been preserved in this fine hardback edition.

The anthology borrows its title from a book of the same name, published in 1911, written by poet Edward Thomas (who is included in the anthology). Thomas examined the relationship between the love poetry of poets such as Chaucer and Shelley and the muse that seemed to draw the words in. This worldly muse of the flesh is the tenth muse; a complement to the nine muses of Greek mythology.

Nearly all the poets are men, and therefore the supporting (but by no means passive) cast of muses are predominantly women. And the poets are mostly a Romantic lot. In part this is a result of the era in which many first forged their craft; early 20th century, a time of war and little peace, when death throws a dark shadow on love, making it all the more necessary.

Of course, The Tenth Muse contains nothing by either Mrs Shakespeare or Mrs Wordsworth. But the wives of George Barker, Lawrence Durrell, David Gascoyne, W.S Graham, Robert Graves, Harold Pinter, C.H. Sissoon and David Wright have all made their bids. The two Thomases (Dylan and Edward) had daughters select as did Thomas Blackburn. Of the two women included, Sebastian Barker made representation for his mother, Elizabeth Smart, while Vivian Riddler was responsible for choosing work by his wife, Anne.

But this is a poetry anthology and not genealogy and marriage lines do not neatly translate into the poetic kind. Besides, the art of a good muse is to honour the work irrespective of any intimate bond. Both Elspeth Barker and Judy Gascoyne have chosen love poetry written by their husbands that was not about them. George Barker's Turn on your side and bear the day to me was, according to Barker, a poem for Elizabeth Smart with whom he had a long relationship before he met Elspeth. Judy Gascoyne has included The Goose-Girl, inspired by a former love. She not only made the editorial choice but also read the poem with dignity and humour at the late November book launch. It is a compassionate, loving muse that can read these lines about a spouse's previous passion:

"She at whose feet I'll finally fall down
With all my niggardly belated offering
Of real emotion..."

There was real if serene emotion at that reading. The muses quietly taking their place at the microphone to speak words they knew so well. It was spellbinding, a form of incantation, as though in the recitation of their poetry, the poet (husband, wife, father, mother) might momentarily reappear. In Françoise Kestsman Durrell's foreword to her husband's work she says, "Sometimes it happens to me to wonder where Larry's mind could be nowadays". It felt as though the cerebral force of Lawrence Durrell was there in that room, together with the pulse of those other Greville poets. Such is the power of the tenth muse.