Collected Poems

Rickword Edgell

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.

About the Author

Edgell Rickword was almost sixteen when the first World War began. He joined the Artist's rifles in 1916, served with the Royal Berkshire Regiment, was awarded the Military Cross, and was invalided out of the army after the Armistice. He went up to Oxford to read French literature in 1919, but he left the University after four terms. His first book of poems appeared in 1921, and in that year he began to write for the "New Statesman", "The Times Literary Supplement" and other periodicals. His critical study of Rimbaud appeared in 1924. In 1925 he began his major editorial labours with the "Calendar of Modern Letters". The first collection of "Scrutinies" was published, under his editorship, in 1928.

Reviews

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

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