SOURCE: Lucas, John. “Sight Lines.” New Statesman 107 (13 January 1984): 24-5.

In the following essay, Lucas writes about Szirtes's word choice and use of rhythm.

There is more than a trace of Geoffrey Grigson in the manner of George Szirtes' relish for the observable world. Describing a bullfinch perched on a lilac flower, he says that the bird's weight ‘bothered the lilac, she bent / a little, her small tent / of pleasure collapsing / inward with the swaying’. Although those lines could never be mistaken for Grigson, the weighting and positioning of rhyme and phrase owe something to his example. In Short Wave, notation becomes poetry: ‘Tired, you slumped into the chair / and shade and water burned a stain / across the colour of your coat.’ That comes from a poem called ‘Against Dullness’, whose sentiment Grigson would certainly echo. But the lines also make plain Szirtes' very individual gifts. Yes, he takes...