poems, 1991-1997
Edwin Brock's death in September 1997, just before his seventieth birthday, brought to an end a body of poems which had been noticed in the late 1950s, in the United States as well as in Britain. Sharp, colloquial, shrewd, direct, and often humorous, Brock's poems are highly original. Two of them, ""Five Ways to Kill a Man"" and ""Song of the Battery Hen,"" are among the best-known, most widely anthologized poems of the twentieth century. In his last years Brock was extraordinarily prolific. `And Another Thing' is a generous selection of these late poems, following the publication of `Five Ways to Kill a Man: New and Selected Poems.' This book shows him at the height of his powers.