In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote ' Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction I have always thought of myself as a poet I do not write "poetic" prose but feel that my outlook on life & my perceptions of events are those of a poet' Including previously uncollected work this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line & her eye for the telling detail her command of poetic forms & her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse Spark's poems are witty idiosyncratic & haunting transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness revealing the dark
- & light
- music beneath the mundane