Collected Early Poems 1950-1970, by Adrienne Rich (Norton, £10.95 in UK)

Born in 1929, Adrienne Rich belongs to a remarkable generation of American, women poets which included, among others, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. She has outlived both of them and has been a prolific collector of prizes and official honours, as well as (in more recent years, at least) a vocal feminist and activist. Her early work still seems amazingly accomplished and mature; by comparison, the poems towards the end of this collection often sound shriller and more simplistic, as though the combined, clamorous influences of "confessional" verse and the protest culture had been deleterious to Rich's development. Her late poetry, presumably, will go into a second volume.