A review by opheliapo
The Faber Book of Beasts by Paul Muldoon

3.0

Although the poems within this book were of generally excellent quality and choice (with some minor exceptions, but that is due to personal taste), and I was delighted, and shocked, and saddened again and again, I found the book lacked structure. I was not being led through a maze or menagerie, nor was I taken on any categorical adventure. In fact the poems seemed to be placed entirely at random throughout the collection, with no pattern to speak of at all. I am not saying, by any means, that I would have liked the book to be structured by poet, date, or animal, as this would have stripped it of charisma, but when one is collecting a series of poetry for publication, one has only three jobs: to find the poems, attain the rights to the poems, and then organise them, the final task of which seems to have had no thought put into it at all.
Otherwise, this book was a delight, and I would very much recommend it, especially 'Toad' by Norman Maccaig on page 264 (though I am a little biased, as frogs and toads are my favourite animals).