Vintage Verse

Vintage Verse (1945) by Clifford Bax
Publisher: Hollis and Carter | ISBN: none (because ISBNs hadn’t been invented yet) | Condition: Good (like an old bottle, cork slightly musty but drinkable)
Lovingly uncorked by Crappy Old Books

Clifford Bax (playwright, poet, essayist, and brother of composer Arnold Bax) was the sort of literary figure who knew everyone worth knowing in 1920s London and probably annoyed half of them. Vintage Verse, published in 1945, is his poetic sampler — a kind of “greatest hits” album for people who thought rhyme was still a moral duty.

This particular copy is rated Good. Which means it has weathered eighty years with only the dignified patina of time: covers a bit softened, pages mellowed to the colour of weak tea, but otherwise intact. Like most poetry collections, it probably spent decades untouched on a shelf, waiting for someone at a dinner party to say, “Ah yes, I dabble in verse.”

Inside you’ll find poems both earnest and lightly whimsical, with titles that sound as though they were written by a man who frequently wore tweed and used the phrase “the moderns” with a sniff. Love, nature, philosophy — all are poured into the glass and swirled with a flourish. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes baffling, but always unmistakably vintage.

Why you might want this book:

• Because nothing impresses dinner guests like plucking an obscure 1945 poetry collection from your shelf and saying, “Oh, Clifford Bax? Terribly underrated.”

• Because poetry ages like wine — a bit sour, perhaps, but all the more potent for it.

• Because in a world of tweets and TikToks, there’s a perverse joy in consuming verse written when people still posted letters and wore hats unironically.

• Because it’s Vintage Verse. The title tells you what you’re getting.

So here it is: Vintage Verse — a gently scuffed anthology of mid-century musings, bottled and corked in 1945, still Good and ready to be poured into your literary glass. From Crappy Old Books, where even the poetry comes with a dash of irony.

Keep browsing: See more Poetry books Other books by Clifford Bax