The Joy of a Ming Vase: Poems by Ruth Dallas

As American critic Tom Disch quipped of many vintage poets: ‘friends and pets die, the garden takes on a new significance.’ There are poems in this collection about Dutch Masters, the remembered voice of a deceased soprano, a waterfall, ancient Chinese artefacts, victims of the World Wars, kites and flowers; but each piece is sensitively imbued not only with the poet’s awareness of impending death but also with the incorrigible fragility of life. While Dallas is at home in a number of different modes, her high regard for literary tradition as a form of spiritual realism makes her eminently readable as a disciplined watcher of the seasons.