It is unfortunate that the poetry of Andrew Motion is not better known in the United States. Despite its occasional appearance in The London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, his poetry remains one of England’s best-kept secrets. Of his three previous books of poetry, only the first—The Pleasure Steamers, published in 1978—is currently available in the United States. (Carcanet, the estimable British publishers who started distributing their titles in America two years ago, have sensibly included this title on their backlist.) Dangerous Play, Motion’s most recent book, seems headed for the same unlucky fate as its two predecessors, Independence (1981) and Secret Narratives (1983), both of which were published by the Salamander Press of Edinburgh but were never distributed here. The Penguin edition of Dangerous Play, which reprints the contents of the handsome hardcover edition brought out last year by Salamander, will attract new readers for Motion in Britain, but none here.

Motion is a central figure in the younger generation of British poets. Nonetheless, Dangerous Play—which brings together twenty-two old poems, seven new ones, and a previously uncollected prose memoir—would seem to be a rather premature “selected.” After all, his poetic career is only ten years old. (He turned thirty-two when this book first appeared in 1984.) What’s more, all of Motion’s earlier books of poetry are still in print. But Dangerous Playis no vain indulgence. The new material, together with the earlier work, highlights Motion’s shift