Clive James power as a poet has increased year by year & there has been no stronger evidence for this than Nefertiti in the Flak Tower. Here his polymathic learning & technical virtuosity are worn more lightly than ever; the effect is merely to produce a deep sense of trust into which the reader gratefully sinks knowing they are in the presence of a master. The most obvious token of that mastery is the books breathtaking range of theme: there are moving elegies a meditation on the later Yeats a Hollywood Iliad odes to rare orchids wartime typewriters & sharks -- as well as a poem on the fate of Queen Nefertiti in Nazi Germany. But despite the dizzying variety James poetic intention becomes increasingly clear: what marks this new collection out is his intensified concentration on the individual poem as self-contained universe. Poetry is a practice he compares (in Numismatics) to striking new coin; & Nefertiti in the Flak Tower is a treasure-chest of one-off marvels with each poem a twin-sided perfect human balance of the unashamedly joyous & the deadly serious whose play of light pays tribute to the dark. Praise for Angels Over Elsinore: The new poems again apply faultless technique to subject matter that ranges in weight from helium to promethium.. . These poems are dazzling Prospect There is a casually rich mix of cultural allusions but the most important quality is complete clarity Independent