John Riley: Selected Poems

By his death, at the age of 41, John Riley's poetry had achieved animportance beyond the trends of the day. Significant though his poems werein the 1960s and after, their value goes beyond their immediate poetic andsocial context. Riley's is a poetry of integrity and vision, in whichprecise observation and wit co-exist with an extraordinary beauty of imageand rhythm. What he achieves is art of a high order.