Donald Davie's poems are here arranged chronologically from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s. Taken together, the poems display that reverence for the distinctive qualities of the English language which has earned him a name as one of Britain's finest living poets.

"Davie's voice—judgemental, ironic, epigrammatic, humorous, self-lacerating—speaks always with reference to an unhuman perpendicular standard that itself goes unquestioned. It is not a standard of Beauty or Truth; Davie is a poet of the third member of the Platonic triad, Justice."—Helen Vendler, The New Yorker

"[Davie's poems] are on the quiet side, often casual and musing in mood and tone; determined to resist large gestures of assent or denial. . .Donald Davie may just be the best English poet-critic of our time."—William Pritchard, The New Republic

"Donald Davie's Collected Poems does more than mark the culmination of one of the most distinguished careers in post-war British poetry; it is the autobiographical journey of a living poet at the height of his creative powers and the mastery of his craft. Davie is considered the most important and valuable contemporary link between poetry in England and America."—Sarah E. McNeil, Little Rock Free Press