The buried stream

Mr. Faber, in the preface to his Collected Poems, recalls with satisfaction the compliment paid to him as a publisher when the chairman of a London University students' society described him as the godfather of modern English poetry. But while he has played a ·certain part in the literary history of the last sixteen years-the first volume of poetry published by his firm was Mr. T. S. Eliot's Poems in 1925-he has published nothing, of his own verse since 1917. The reasons for this long silence and for its termination are given in a preface of considerable length, which expresses the author's attitude not only towards his own poetry but towards the poetry of his time. We think that this preface will be found to contain matter of serious interest to lovers of poetry. It is at least an original footnote to a remarkable period. The collection is divided into three books, arranged chronologically: 1908 to 1914, 1914 to 1918, 1918 to 1940. Most (but not all) of the poems in the first two books were published, in their first forms, in two previous volumes Interflow and In the Valley of Vision, which appeared in 1915 and 1917 respectively. The rest, including all the poems in the third book, have not been published before -- Dust jacket.

This book is a collection of the author's poetry from 1914-1940.