Family values - Wendy Cope

From a motorway service area to her ambivalent relationship with
religion, Wendy Cope covers a wide range of experience in her new
collection. Her mordant humour and formal ingenuity are in evidence,
even as she remembers the wounds of a damaging childhood; and in poems
about love and the inevitable problems of ageing she achieves an
intriguing blend of sadness and joy. Two very different sets of
commissioned poems round off a remarkable volume, whose opening poem
sounds clearly the profound note of compassion which underlies the
whole.