Anybody at all interested in English poetry should read [D. J. Enright's Collected Poems]. It has in it the best autobiographical sequence written this century: 'The Terrible Shears.'… It also contains, in the short pieces, some of the wittiest and wryest comment on the modern world to be found in the verse of our time….

The intelligence, the irony and the wit are there from the first…. Puns appear throughout, good ('The hot iron of the railroad hisses in the air') and not so good ('The Metropolitan Water Bawd'). Yet the descriptions of Egypt and Japan often have a sensuous quality, and pathos is not beyond him….

Enright isn't a lyrical writer, nor is he fluent as some poets are. He isn't strong on form, the rhymes happen when they want to. 'A Pleasant Walk' is the one exception, where the stanzas stand like solid citizens and...