Don Anderson’s description of Peter Rose’s previous collection as having a fin de siècle mood to it, is surely appropriate to his new collection too. There is an air of decadence to Rose’s poetry, but while this may have much larger social implications – it is the end of the century after all – the decadence seems to me to have a more definite testament to offer. Rose’s is a starkly personal vision – focused on the emotional and moral failure of individuals rather than on the failure of the culture as a whole.