stapsreads

As one might expect, the Nation's taste wanders between the unutterably cheesy and the really quite good. Contains quite a lot of Betjeman, a fair bit of Larkin, plenty of (Dylan) Thomas... In the main, the Nation's favourite poets seem to hail from the Nation, or at least the British Isles. (Sylvia Plath sneaks in there, mind. So does Robert Frost; no prizes for guessing which little horse must think it strange ahem) It includes some of my absolute favourites - Adrian Henri's 'Without You', and Seamus Heaney's 'Mid-Term Break' (if by 'favourite' you mean 'makes me cry on a crowded train don'tlookatmelikethat'). Also a couple that make me cringe. 'Footsteps' for example. ('"That, my child," said the Lord, "was when we were hopping."') Depressingly low proportion of female to male poets. Distinct lack of Housman (wot no summertime on Bredon?) - I'd have expected more than two, though I suppose the blue remembered hills would be the pick of choice. On the whole, though, a pleasing and reasonably representative collection.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7971965

I'm not sure that I have much more to say about Tove Jansson, other than that I'm very glad that this community prompted me to pick up her later, adult, fiction. I've been raving about her ever since, made my work book club read The True Deceiver, gave my mother a copy of The Summer Book for Christmas...

This is a collection put together from various other collections; one or two I'd already come across in Travelling Light. They're a bit of a mixed bag. My absolute favourite was 'Messages', a wicked compilation of domestic notes, fanmail and impudent requests that Jansson received as the author of the Moomins series. Next best were the ones taken from The Sculptor's Daughter, heavily autobiographical, and again with a convincing child's voice.


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