Firstly, I bought this book online after hunting for it in Newcastle bookshops to no avail for a year. Come on home town. Stock poetry or people won't buy it. Its a self—fulfilling prophecy.

Anyhow, it was worth hunting out. I kind of already expected to enjoy the illustrations. The thing that surprised me was how difficult it was to follow the flow of the text, until I found Crawford's patterns. This wasn't a bad thing. Reading a page wrong feels jarring and forces you to reread. Thisbook might just have improved my ability to read poetry.

The poem itself you either know or don't (Do I contradict myself? Fine, I contradict myself. I'm large, I contain multitudes) and I didn't much care for it when I read it in my 20s. I still found passages a bit... unwoke? Maybe I'm too British. I can't love myself that much. But the illumination brought out more of the energy of the poem for me. It's one I can see my self going back to in 20 years.

I appreciate the effort but ultimately I found this copy unreadable. I kept having to turn the book this way and that to follow the rambling text and eventually gave up. Will re-sell and stick with my standard Library of America version. ( )