Over 400 poems first published between 1930 and 1972, small drawings by Nash included, ( )

Nash is the product of a literary age of dandies; those who came of age in the interwar years and always had a clever killer line in readiness. If it were a duel of wits their weapon would be superior to yours; not bigger, not better but sharper and aesthetically gorgeous.

It’s a style that palls over nearly 400 pages. You’re waiting for the poet to get that line in; even the sweetly beautiful structures leading up to the great line can become cloying. Plus the frequent disregard for line and meter (drawn from the influence of Gilbert and Sullivan I suspect) becomes annoying when repeated. There’s rarely a poem that goes by without something to recommend it but all too often it feels utterly disposable; cheap rhymes and cheats aiming to get past the reader in the way Byron often did because he seemed to get bored. Worth reading but it really needed a better editorial chainsaw taken to it; a leaner volume would’ve saved the thematic and topical repetition that bedevils the book. ( )