Great Regulars: That volume, still the poet [W.D. Snodgrass]'s best,

included a line that provides this new collection with its alluring title: Not for Specialists. The work that contains it, "April Inventory", is a wry, somewhat elegiac poem that I memorised when I first read it, 40 years ago, and recite in my head more often than you would believe. The opening stanza sets the pace and tone:

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: Whim of steel

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