I have sometimes thought that Durrell is the last of the Georgian poets, that it may be a short step from Shropshire to Rhodes or Vaumort. His is no "weekend ruralism," but has always been a kind of delicate passion for the "natural." Most readers think of him as either a satirist or a love poet. He is actually to one side of either category. The droll imperatives of sex and conscience animate his poems—England at the end of its tether, tried to the Mediterranean pleasure principle. Durrell has wanted to write a poetry of the earth, and of the earthy. He is most at home in the Plaka, on the docks, at a brothel, his eye cocked for the bas-fonds d'une vile, by turns typical and grotesque and mythic. Even his later poems—occasional, listless—attempt their rueful celebrations…. (p. 170)

"I want my total poetic work...