28 NOVEMBER 1987, Page 34

Peter Levi

I hate the idea of choosing one, every December, among all the year's poets, particularly this year which 'has produced five or six excellent slim volumes, all by friends of mine. Choosing one blindfold, as it were, I would name P. J. Kavanagh because he goes on getting better as a poet, (Presences, Chatto, £4.95). Prose is easier to choose because I am intoxicated at the moment by the collected pieces of Empson, called Argufying (Chatto, £25). He shows that the best way to open windows in the mind is by breaking them. To have Robert Lowell's and Empson's collected prose come out in the same year is unfair to other kinds of writer. I try to avoid reading overestimated books, but I expect Hansard must be overestimated.