Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels

• Something Nasty in the Bookshop
• Between the Gardening and the Cookery 
• Comes the brief Poetry shelf; 
• By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology 
• Offers itself.

• Critical, and with nothing else to do, 
• I scan the Contents page, 
• Relieved to find the names are mostly new; 
• No one my age.

• Like all strangers, they divide by sex: 
• Landscape Near Parma 
• Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, 
• So does Rilke and Buddha.

• “I travel, you see,” “I think” and “I can read’ 
• These titles seem to say; 
• But I Remember You, Love is my Creed, 
• Poem for J.,

• The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter 
• For several seconds; 
• From somewhere in this (as in any) matter 
• A moral beckons.

• Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart 
• Or squash it flat? 
• Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; 
• Girls aren’t like that.

• We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff 
• Can get by without it. 
• Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough; 
• They write about it.

• And the awful way their poems lay them open 
• Just doesn’t strike them. 
• Women are really much nicer than men: 
• No wonder we like them.

• Deciding this, we can forget those times 
• We stayed up half the night 
• Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, 
• And couldn’t write.

Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis (April 16, 1922-1995) was an English writer best known for his novels, including his 1954 satire on English high education, Lucky Jim (the writer’s description of a hangover is unrivalled in English prose). However, in addition to short stories, more than 20 novels, a grammar, and various essays on a variety of subjects (mostly dealing with drinking), and a book addressing the question of how the common schlub can be James Bond, Amis also wrote six volumes of poetry. His literary career matched that of his close friend and fellow poet, Philip Larkin; however, Larkin first became known as a novelist before turning to poetry, while Amis began with poetry before making a name through his fiction. Amis’s poetry eschewed the exotic and esoteric approach of the earlier generation of poets (and contemporaries such as Dylan Thomas) for a straightforward yet nuanced style.