Smart Devices : 52 Poems from The Guardian 'Poem of the Week'

A Year Of Hand-picked Poems And Commentaries From The Guardian's 'poem Of The Week' Blog. Carol Rumens Has Been Contributing 'poem Of The Week' To The Guardian For More Than A Dozen Years. Do The Maths: That's More Than 624 Blogs! No Wonder She Has A Large And Devoted Following. She's A Poet-reader, Not An Academic. She Is Fascinated By The New, But Her Interest Is Instructed By The Classic Poems She Has Read. They Make Her Ear Demanding: When It Hears That Something, It Perks Up. She Perks Up. 'a Poem Is A Small (or Large) Machine Made Of Words.' Rumens Partly Agrees With Williams But She Develops The Conceit, Seeing Each Poem 'as A More Flexible Instrument, A Miniature Neo-cortex, That Super-connective, Super-layered Smartest Device Of The Mammalian Brain'. She Tries To Avoid Poems Built From Kits With Instruction Manuals. She Looks For Surprises, And She Surprises Us. A wide ranging anthology of work by contemporary poets from different backgrounds, with accompanying prose commentaries, drawn from the Guardian 'Poem of the Week' blog.