Edgell Rickword (1898-1982), one of the great radical editors and critics of the century, was a poet whose three volumes and a scattering of layer poems merit the accolade of The Times Literary Supplement: he is the best English poet between Eliot and Empson, or as Julian Symons said, 'one of the wittiest, most stylish and least appreciated poets of the 1920s'.

This edition of the poems replaced Behind the Eyes: Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet, 1976), adding work discovered by Rickword's biographer and introducing some of Rickword's own later revisions. His war poems - written after his experience of the trenches of the Great War - are included, along with symbolist meditations, savage satires (including 'To the Wife of a Non-Interventionist Statesman'), erotic and evocative love poetry, and his translations of Rimbaud.


'energy, wit and sinewed intelligence... robust, masculine sexuality, caustic disposal of cant, uncluttered compassion and political commitment of great force' Desmond Graham