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The Map of Love (1939)

The Map of Love, a collection of poetry and prose, was published on 24 August 1939, but the book's reception was completely overshadowed by the build up to war.

It received mixed reviews, but won praise from Herbert Read who wrote in Seven: "It is mainly a poetry of the elemental physical experience: birth, copulation, death .... A unique book ... It contains the most absolute poetry that has ever been written in our time, and one can only pray that this poet will not be forced in any way to surrender the subtle course of his genius." The poems are published in the Collected Poems, and the stories in Collected Stories.

Poetry:

Because the pleasure-bird whistles
I make this in a warring absence
When all my five and country senses
We lying by seasand
It is the sinners' dust-tongued bell
make me a mask
The spire cranes
After the funeral
Once it was the colour of saying
Not from this anger
How shall my animal
The tombstone told
On no work of words
A saint about to fall
If my head hurt a hair's foot
Twenty-four years

Prose:

The Tree
The Enemies
The Dress
The Visitor
The Orchards
The Mouse and the Woman
The Map of Love

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