Collected Poems

Burns Singer spent the 1950's gaining and losing a reputation. He became an Insider, notably as the writer of Times Literary Supplement leaders, yet considered himself in many respects an Outsider, alienating a whole generation of young editors and fellow poets. His attitude to the Movement was one of contempt, expressed at parties, in pubs and in print. His deepest sympathies were with the Apocalyptics of the 1940s. W.S. Graham, George Barker and Dylan Thomas were influences that he absorbed and outgrew, but never repudiated. His poetry, in fact, fuses Apocalyptic sublimity with the principled intelligence of the Movement. 'The Transparent Prisoner' is a major contribution to the poetry of the Second World War, a narrative of distinction, based on experiences of an escaped PoW. 'Still and All', the title poem of Singer's one collection, beautifully distils his 'ways/Of speech'. Singer can be as mocking, down-to- earth and up-to-date as Larkin or Amis, but the theme to which he invariably returns is immortality - in his own haunting words, 'The least of things and least preposterous/Of the infinities that robe you round'. This edition reprints most of Collected Poems (1970), adding uncollected and unpublished poems. The work is arranged (as far as possible) chronologically, with an introduction and note on the text.…