Collected Poems: Poems 1970-1984

Reading, a British poet of bilious wit, takes real chances in his work. In this collection, which gathers his first eight books of poetry, he employs both traditional and innovative verse forms, playing them off against each other in poems that render his recurring themes of death, illness, madness and cruelty. Reading's innovations are many and varied: in ""Choreograph,"" a square of nine boxes filled with letters and numbers identifies the locations of windows in a high-rise building. ""Between the Headlines"" juxtaposes actual tabloid announcements with sarcastic asides: over the headline ""STUDENT `GOES MISSING' IN AFRICAN MYSTERY,"" Reading writes, ""(Not had such a supper in their life/ and the little ones chewed on the bones-o/ bones-o."" In ""The Euphemisms,"" Reading makes barbed doggerel out of slang terms for the mentally ill: ""Rambling, Giddy, Flighty, Crackbrained/ Soft, Bewildered, Off One's Head,/ Wandering, Wild, Bereft of Reason,/ Daft, Distracted, Unhinged."" Even poems inspired by more traditional forms, such as the haiku ""Tanka,"" shriek with iconoclasm: ""`That's very tiny,'/ she says (probes his kimono)...."" By turns jarring and intriguing, Reading's poetry is a poetry of foul moods. But it is also a poetry that insists on angry intelligence over world-weary head-shaking. (June)