What kind of truth does modern poetry offer? Michael Hamburger’s approach to this question ranges over European and American poetry since Baudelaire and the result is one of the best introductions available to twentieth-century poetry and its antecedents. Stressing the tensions and conflicts in and behind the work of almost every major poet of the period, Hamburger’s non-partisan approach and practitioner’s appreciation of the aesthetic problems ensure that the many different possibilities open to poets since Baudelaire are lucidly and sympathetically discussed.