Coplas por la muerte de su padre by Jorge Manrique (c.1440-79) is one of the most celebrated poems in the Spanish language. Written shortly before the poet's death, it is a dignified elegy that speaks not just of a personal loss, that of the poet's father Rodrigo Manrique (d.1476), but of the evanescence of all things sub specie aeternitatis. Its popularity is aided by memorable lines, not least the two opening metaphors: man's life is a river meandering unto the sea of death (st. 3), and this world is the road to the next, the lasting dwelling place (st. 5). The poem replicates these reflections in its wending form. Its forty stanzas each comprise four tercets; each tercet is made up of two longer octosyllabic verses combined with one four-syllable half line known as pie quebrado. These regular broken lines, like beats of a heart, invest the poem with a resonant quality befitting the injunction at the opening of the poem to awaken one's slumbering soul to the passage of time: 'Recuerde el alma dormida, - avive el seso e despierte' (st. 1).

The poetry of Dylan Thomas has long been heralded as amongst the greatest of the Modern period, and along with his play, Under Milk Wood, his books are amongst the best-loved works in the literary canon. This new selection of his poetry contains all of his best-loved verse - including 'I See the Boys of Summer', 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion', 'The Hand that Signed the Paper' and, of course, 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' - as well as some of his lesser-known lyrical pieces, and aims to show the great poet in a new light. '[Then] the greatest living poet in the English language.' (Observer) 'He is unique, for he distils an exquisite mysterious moving quality which defies analysis.' (Sunday Times)

For the first time, Faber publish a selection from the poetry of Philip Larkin. Drawing on Larkin's four collections and on his uncollected poems. Chosen by Martin Amis. 'Many poets make us smile; how many poets make us laugh - or, in that curious phrase, "laugh out loud" (as if there's another way of doing it)? Who else uses an essentially conversational idiom to achieve such a variety of emotional effects? Who else takes us, and takes us so often, from sunlit levity to mellifluous gloom?... Larkin, often, is more than memorable: he is instantly unforgettable.' - Martin Amis