From editing a small, avant-garde poetry magazine, to translating several modern German poets, to producing three skillfully wrought volumes of his own verse, Matthew Mead has pursued his literary career with an uncommonly keen dedication to poetry as an almost sacred craft. Stylistically, his work grows out of a deep awareness of the poetic tradition in English as well as of the current poetic practice in Europe and the United States, but, thematically, it encompasses an even wider range, extending from a criticism of contemporary society to a search for the ancient language of poetic myth.

Very little is known about Mead's life, in part because, as he writes, "I try to keep my person and my poems as far apart as may be...." He was born in Buckinghamshire and entered the British army in his late teens. His term of service, from 1942 to 1947, included three years in...