Don't Ask Me What I Mean
ed. by Clare Brown and Don Paterson
Picador, £16.99.

For the last half-century England's Poetry Book Society has made quarterly selections of the best book or books for its members. Selected poets are then asked to write a brief prose piece for the PBS Bulletin. Don't Ask Me What I Mean is a distillation of the best of these pieces, ranging from the very famous to poets whose names you've never heard. By no means are the best entries always from the best poets, though there are some real gems from Ted Hughes (both on himself and on Plath's Ariel), Edwin Muir, Philip Larkin, and others. The dullest entries are when the poet actually tries to discuss or (worse) explain the book he's just published; you feel you've asked some earnest Ph.D. student about his thesis. It's the evasions that are consistently interesting, and the best of these are general comments on poetry that in certain paragraphs are almost poems themselves. This book isn't available in the U.S., but it's definitely worth seeking out online or special ordering.

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