Nothing too great. ( )

The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke is a collection of all his poems the editors found fit to print organized from last to first with a collection of fragments from his final journey to Gallipoli in an appendix at the end. The problem with collections ordered this way is that all the good stuff is at the beginning, and the drift towards juvenilia makes for increasingly tiresome reading. Considering that Brooke's best work was done in a few short years before his early death from septicemia on the Mediterranean front of World War I, at times it becomes quite a slog. But Brooke wrote poems worth reading: including his war sonnets, "Grantcester", and some very interesting pieces set in Polynesia. And he deserves to be remembered, as a minor poet, perhaps, but as someone who had genuine poetic talent. It helps that both he and I are fans of the poets of the 90s. At times you can feel a bit of their rhythmic musicality come through his more modern style. So if you are interested in poets who died in World War I or just 20th century poets in general, Brooke is one you will want to bump into, and this volume is a good way to do so. ( )

This is a collection of the poems of a major Georgian poet whose death in the First World War cut short the development of what would have become a major talent.