Samuel Beckett's Poetry is the first book-length study of Beckett's complete poetry, designed for students and scholars of twentieth century poetry and literature, as well as for specialists of Beckett's work. This volume explores how poetry provided Beckett a medium of expression during key moments in his life, from his earliest attempts at securing a reputation as a published writer, to the work of restoring his own speech while suffering aphasia shortly before his death. Often these were moments of desperation and discouragement, when more substantial works were not possible: moments of illness, of personal loss or of public disaster. This volume includes an introduction that contextualizes Beckett as a poet and a chronology of the composition and publication of all his known poems. Essays offer a range of critical perspectives, from translation theory, war poetics and Irish Studies to Beckett's debts to Modernism, Romanticism and the Jazz Age.

‘The editors and a distinguished team of contributors have produced a superb collection that leaves no poetic allusion unanalyzed. This book will be a classic of Beckett criticism. Here is scholarship taken to a high degree, adding contexts and glosses to Sean Lawlor’s and John Pilling’s pionneering work. Everyone interested in Beckett will need to read this engrossing book on the poetry and rediscover Beckett the poet.’

Jean-Michel Rabaté - University of Pennsylvania, American Academy of Arts and Sciences