The Secret Life of Poems A Poetry Primer, by Tom Paulin
Faber, £17.99
Paulin’s textual criticism will as likely be a boon to students as it would have been a wonder to the poets he analyses. Forty-seven of the best-known and best-loved poems in English, from Sir Thomas Wyatt, through Milton, Browning, Yeats, Auden, Larkin, to Heaney, Muldoon and Raine, are examined for “sound, cadence, metre, rhyme, form” rather than for textual explication. The result, far from being dry exegesis, is a reading of the workings of a poem rather as a musician might understand a score.
Shoot the Damn Dog, A Memoir of Depression, by Sally Brampton
Bloomsbury, £15.99
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There is a huge readership for “misery memoirs”, and celebrity confessional. Sally Brampton worked at Vogue, became the first editor of Elle in the UK and headed Red magazine. So far, so successful, so what’s her problem? It was profound clinical depression and, later, alcoholism. There is precious little glitz or glamour in this tough-minded account of her illness and recovery (or, at least, control of the medical condition). It is a courageous book, sparing neither herself nor readers the brutal reality.
Election 2008, A Voter’s Guide, by Franklin Foer and the Editors of The New Republic
Yale, £7.99
The shelf life of these collected profiles of contenders for the position of Emperor of the West may be short (use by November 2008), but it’s essential now for political junkies. One notable omission in this gallery of US presidential candidates - five Democrats and eight Republicans - is Mike Huckabee, but otherwise it is comprehensive. The tone of writing is exemplary, and the profiles are presented with disarming lightness of touch and a relaxed use of vernacular language that gives surface readability to the political positions that US voters and journalists regard with both high seriousness and mild cynicism.