Derek Mahon’s Selected Poems, published to honor the poet’s fiftieth birthday, contains a fine but slightly confusing selection of poems from his six previous books. The collection is confusing because some of the poems are out of order, at least if we take the true order to be that in the original books. This would be a minor matter if the poems themselves were identified by year or book: they are not. What the reader is offered, essentially, is a sequence of poems, many with new titles, uninterrupted by so much as a chapter heading or blank page. This makes the task of tracing Mahon’s development a bit difficult for anyone unfamiliar with his work.

The poetry is so splendid, however, that one is more than willing to put aside such editorial qualms. Mahon’s connection with his Northern Ireland homeland, like that of his near-contemporary Seamus Heaney, has been tenuous at best. Even though Heaney and Mahon come from opposite sides of the religious fence in Northern Ireland—Heaney was born a Roman Catholic and Mahon a Protestant—both came to resent the artistic compromises forced on them by the political turmoil in their native land. Mahon’s birthplace, Belfast, has been the scene of terrible fighting in recent years; Heaney, who was born in County Derry, also spent much of the 1960s—first as a student and then as a teacher—in war-torn Belfast.

The poetry is so splendid, however, that one is more than willing to put aside such