[The Second Life] contains straightforward verse and (printed on differently-coloured paper) concrete poems. [Morgan] is certainly the wittiest and least pretentious practitioner of con-Edwin (George) Morgan 1920– Photograph by Jessie Ann Matthew, Courtesy of Edwin Morgancrete poetry, in which his range extends from the charming piece that plays variations on the word 'pomander' to social comments like Starryveldt, in which this word changes gradually to Sharpeville and shriekvolley, then to smashverwoerd and spadevow, sunvast, survive and SO:VAEVICTIS. I still feel that this sort of trickiness is not the right form in which to comment on the South African situation, but Mr Morgan goes a long way to justifying concrete poetry as something more than a joke, although he has some good jokes too like French Persian Cats Having a Ball.

The poems that lack the support of typographical devices sometimes tend, like those of E. E...