It took me a while to do it, but yesterday I reached the end of Charles Causley's Collected Poems 1951 - 2000 - and immediately felt like going right back to the beginning. Reading of collections, single books and anthologies in this manner is something I've only been doing for three or four years, but I find it peculiarly rewarding. It gives a sense of having finished the collection whilst holding out the wonderful possibilities of revisiting individual poems which, of course, can never be truly finished.
Possible definition of poetry there: bits of writing that can never be read to a conclusion.
(By the by, ending the Collected with Eden Rock is a master-stroke. That extraordinarily simple, yet resonant throwaway final line: I had not thought that it would be like this. For the reading he does for the Poetry Archive version Mr Causley manages to throw the ending away even more so, if that's possible. You can listen here. And has anyone ever used half-rhymes with such utter perfection?)
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