David Wright
Thomas Blackburn, who died 10 years ago, was one of the most neglected poets to appear in the Forties. He left behind him an amazing body of unpublished work from which more than one harvest has been reaped. The latest is The Adjacent Kingdom (Peter Owen, £7.50), edited by Jean MacVean. Most, and the most im- pressive, of these poems are meditations upon death (hence the title). This new collection, together with Blackburn's other posthumous volume, Bread for the Winter Birds (Hutchinson, 1980), should establish him as one of the few authentic poets of our time.
As for the rest, the best biography I've read this year has been Nora (Hamish Hamilton, £16.95) by Brenda Maddox: a percipient portrait of James Joyce's much underestimated (though not by him) Irish wife; a book that throws light on their marriage, upon Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, to say nothing of Joyce himself; a good read. Then there's The Collected Poems and Selected Prose of A. E. Hous- man (Allen Lane, £18.95) edited by Christ- opher Ricks. Acute intelligence and savage wit displayed in his alas too few essays prove Housman to have been one of the best literary critics of the century.
The most overrated book of the year? Dare I? The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin (Faber, £16.95) edited by Anthony Thwaite.
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