Stephen Edgar is acknowledged as one of the most elegant and technically astonishing poets currently writing. The poems in History of the Day have an imaginative reach, a grandeur and sweep which lead us through the transfiguring intensities of love to the burdens of loss, grief and horror. They contemplate the fragile nature of consciousness when measured against the immensities as time and space. He engages language at the highest, most sophisticated level. Edgar makes crystalline forms and patterns out of language so that every word glows, catches the light, and illuminates his vision. History of the Day is, quite simply, brilliant.