Casting a Spell and Other Poems

An anthology of new poems specially commissioned from eminent authors. The title suggests a shared theme of enchantment, though only a handful of the 50 poems hover around the cloudy zone between the everyday world and the supernatural. A very wide range of moods is expressed, from the knockabout humour of Bernard Levin's clever limericks, to the laconic fatalism of Roy Fuller's 'At the Seaside': 'Every day the children crumple up the beach. And twice a day the ocean smooths it out...' I found the illustrations somewhat lacking in vigour, but this is more than compensated for by the liveliness and variety of the poems.