Over more than forty years Kathleen Raine has written twelve volumes of poetry, three volumes of autobiography, several volumes of essays and criticism, numerous translations, and introductions to the work of other poets. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she has remained, nevertheless, relatively unnoticed in the United States, and her work is often omitted from major anthologies of contemporary poetry. Since the 1930s British literary periodicals of the highest reputation have published her poetry, which reveals a mythological emphasis, a lyrical ease, and an intellectual framework that sets her squarely in a philosophical and poetic tradition extending from Plato through Plotinus, Milton, and Swedenborg, to Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, and Yeats. Raine sees herself as a defender of an earlier tradition of poetry that is "language of poetic symbol within Perennial Philosophy." She is attracted to mystical and visionary writers and at the same time eschews many...