Links of the week May 23 2022 (21)

But how does a book of poems become a book? How does one make a book out of pages of single poems written over a span of years? This is still hard to explain. But I will try, and most likely fail, to convey how I have done it. But first, a caveat: everyone makes books differently, everyone makes poems differently. There is no one way, no right way, only the way that brings you pleasure, the way that lets all the poems vibrate and pulse within the pages.

I flip the page, my heart in my throat, as the modern world vanishes in the foul-smelling mist.

It's London, 1850. Soon a body will turn up-floating in the Thames or sprawled in one of the brick-walled alleys. I settle in for another blissful sojourn in Victorian England.

"Sexual repression, dark alleys, great detectives, ornate prose," says author James McCreet ("Why we all love a Victorian Murder," The Guardian, 15 May 2011). "No wonder the 19th century is our template for crime fiction...[and] if there's a silhouetted top hat, a rustle of crinoline and a scream cut short with straight razor, all the better."