Peter Levi is one of the most accomplished and individual lyric poets now writing. This is his fourth collection, containing 40 poems, mostly written - some in Greece and Afghanistan, the majority in England - since the publication of `Fresh Water, Sea Water" (1966). They develop the intimate, almost mystical element which is the keynote of his work. John Bayley writing in `Agenda" described this as "his power of taking an active situation, emotion or longing, and revealing beneath and around it the quality that Napoleon called `repose"." `Death is a Pulpit", containing poems written for public performance, is published simultaneously.