David Wright
ROBERT NYE's A Collection of Poems 1955-1988 (Hamish Hamilton, £12.95) is a surprise, yet not a surprise. Most perci- pient of our poetry reviewers, having hid his own poems under a bushel (his last collection appeared over a quarter of a century ago), Robert Nye now proves himself a poet. This collection — not a `collected' — is a distillation of his work: just over 100 poems, not one of which is not in some way or another a delight, whether for its imagination or crafts- manship.
C. H. Sisson's On the Look Out (Car- canet, £14.95) is unusual in that it begins at the end and ends at the beginning: 'some- thing of significance had happened to me in 1914; I had been born'. It is more unusual in that it is an intelligent, acerbic, and unillusioned account of the growth of a poet's mind — the prose is sharp and witty. No flummery but plenty of fun.
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