With a yell of triumph he finishes the great work;
He slumps back in his seat, exhausted but happy;
Idly, he fingers through it, and reads the very first lines;
Little by little the smile disappears from his face.


From A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty
       

The bewildering range of the Scottish writer Frank Kuppner's work, as evidenced in the ten books he published in the last century, is such that many people did not know where to start. Here, for them, is the obvious place to do so, at least where his poetry is concerned: the author selects from his five books of poetry; A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty (1984), The Intelligent Observation of Naked Women (1987), Ridiculous! Absurd! Disgusting! (1989), Everything is Strange (1994) and Second Best Moments in Chinese History (1997). A fragmented epic, The Kuppneriad, is the encore. Love, China, wisdom, humour, exquisitely variable and visible taste, a compelling reticence about botany: all are here. Or, more precisely, some are here.

His earlier books have been variously received. 'A tour de force of unsense, not nonsense,' Peter Porter opined in the Observer (1989). 'Exuberance, by and large, is a rare enough quality in contemporary British poetry; Frank Kuppner seems to have it and a great deal more besides,' said Eavan Boland in the Irish Times (1987). In the Sunday Telegraph (1990) Charles Palliser declared, 'Kuppner is a kind of Glaswegian Kierkegaard with all the philosopher's anguished wit and playful melancholy but a lighter touch...' And that wise old magazine, Poetry Review, had this to say: 'Kingsley Amis wouldn't like it.'