Sonatas and Dreams

It is a volume of verve and variety, with 'sonatas' — his unique 'three-part inventions' — alongside recreations of Anglo-Saxon poems and riddles; poems for children in both serious and fantasy modes; an immaculately written prose piece on a collier's return from his shift... a little masterpiece on the stickleback, and a remarkable sequence on Van Gogh paintings which evokes the whole tragi-clotted enterprise... Massingham's Sonatas and Dreams are a delight.