Selected Poems

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) published thirteen volumes of poetry between 1893 and 1936, crucial transitional years in the evolution of modern poetry. His early poems were written under the shadow of the Rossettis, Swinburne and William Morris, but Ford outgrew their heady late-Victorian lyricism, developing a voice that was natural, impressionistic, and ironic. This selection of his verse traces his development from the haunting poignancy of his early poems to his later style, which was to be so influential in the development of Modernism. Ezra Pound considered him to be the best lyric poet in England, and it was Ford who taught Pound that 'poetry should be as well written as prose'. He transformed Pound's style and, through Pound, the styles of Yeats and Eliot.