“... I was in our works canteen when a call Came over the tannoy to watch him endorse the new car. As he bent and touched it, he said, ‘This product will save your area For another decade; it will be loved Equally by US management And families whom its air-cooled rear engine Will power to school. I’m saying this That you may take a pride in your work ...”

“... a big business, but not, as it is now, a corporate power that crosses national and class borders. Robert Altman’s new film, Prêt-à-Porter, is like La Dolce Vita grafted onto Funny Face. The unaffected and trusting Hepburn and Astaire would be marginalised or crushed in the fashion world portrayed here. Altman has never enjoyed a sustained period of ...”

“... As a boy, Robert Duncan had a recurring dream. He would imagine himself in the middle of a treeless field. The ripe grass rippled, though there was no wind, and the light, as he later remembered, ‘was everywhere’, though there was no sun to be seen. Seeing himself in the centre of a circle of children, all of them singing and playing ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’, Duncan understood that he was ‘it’: ‘the Chosen One … a “King” or victim of the children’s round dance ...”

“... How it was, after the babies, One week’s vacation at the shore During late July, trying to isolate A hummock of time in which to be dazed, Beer in the mug, the slant of sunsets, Fried chicken seasoned with sand. All of us thinner, sweat-dried, more prone To anger. With a housecat prowling Through dune grass . . . And they made a film of it. I’ve forgotten The name of the one who played me ...”

“... In the new dream I give you a big-radiatored 100-miles-on-a-gallon-of-water steamcar Exported by the White Sewing Machine Co, Cleveland, Ohio. You scoot with aplomb Through Alexandria to Loch Lomond past the indigenous Argyll Motors Factory with its built-to-last Stone car over the door. People call you odd, Determined, unchaperoned, ‘fast’. Your wheels cover Scotland, familiar and intimate, Tin-Lizzying Right up Ben Nevis, mass-produced, Laughing with the dash of the woman driver’s TS1, first car in Dundee ...”

“... George Buchanan’s over-the-top ‘Elegy for Jean Calvin’. The volume remains high in some of Robert Fergusson’s sophistic-performative street-talk, Burns’s on-off, rip-roaring ‘Tam o’Shanter’, MacDiarmid’s last trump blawing ‘tootle-ootle-oo’, Edwin Morgan’s Loch Ness Monstering ‘Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok ...”

“... Hi I’m Lois I’m lonely I live near the motorway on Lewis Want to chat with me? I love chatrooms You might have seen me on TV I’m really feral I’m twenty-one I love chatrooms Want to chat with me? It’s so hot here I love Paris I used To dance there I’ve just washed all my hair Hi I love existentialism Want to chat with me? I temp as an a ...”

“... After a Spate of Sleet and Hail He dreamed of smoke – An electrical fire? Woke, stumbled Through the house, the smell Vanishing, a wisp rising nightward. Back in bed, restless with the light off, A bottle of Bordeaux on his nightstand, A pistol in the drawer, a loneliness He couldn’t control, though he enjoyed Control. Posture was important, shoes, An expression to satisfy women In power suits, the manner of how One crossed a floor – his manicured Nails, his fondness for even numbers ...”

“... Herakleitos eftir Kallimachos Herakleitos, Whan they telt me Ye’d deed Wey bak I grat, Mindin Yon nicht We sat oot gabbin Till the cauld Peep o day. An sae, ma auld Halikarnassian pal, Ye got seik And noo ye’re someplace Deid in the grun – But thae sangs, aa Yon nichtingales o yourn Still soun Lik they sounded Then When we set oot An sat oot, Twa young men ...”

“... Toucans Meanwhile in Costa Rica the volcano smokes Toucans glide down to the banana plantation – For the moment everything is relaxed. It is snowing in Michigan, but I’m thinking Of the newspaper story in September, Two parrots building a nest on a silo In Montcalm County – Guido points out Alulu shadings above the coverts, Assuming I’m a birder ...”

“... Ferrari Student poser, presbyterian swami, When Being and Nothingness ruled the Kelvin Way, I rebelled by carrying a rolled umbrella To lectures. I never finished La Nausée. Chaperoned through suburbs by my virginity, My act of Existential Choice was pie, Beans and chips at Glasgow’s boil-in-the-bag Student Ref. Couscous? I’d rather have died. Nightlife was homelife, the tick-tock soothe Of a bowling club clock, long darning needles’ hint Of suture, so homely and sharp; Each birthday, a wrapped after-dinner mint ...”

“... of Defence for Research and Engineering, Strategic and Theatre Nuclear Forces, that Robert Scheer heard the phrase from which he took the title of his book: ‘if there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.’ The shovels, Mr Jones explained, were for digging holes in the ground. These would be covered somehow or other ...”

“... gives a full account of Agatha Christie’s work, making even plot-summaries a joy to read. If Robert Barnard sometimes seems more astute than his subject, he’s delightfully appreciative of her strategies, of the right and proper use of character stereotypes, and of Mayhem Parva, her own special English village fantasy with its definitions of the middle ...”

“... spangles of diamonds, / a sparkling cover for earth’) to the carnivalesque Scots of Robert Fergusson, who hymns ‘Caller Oysters’ and harangues ‘the Principal and professors of the university of St Andrews, on their superb treat to Dr. Samuel Johnson’. When Fergusson rounds on his former teachers he subjects their Scotophobic guest to a ...”

“... As avidity circulated about the soccer game A bear lingered, nosing among the spruces, Under damp boughs, sampling scents, perching Briefly on a stump, while remaining curious, Until, on impulse, it stepped out on its hind legs, Causing the playing field to empty in a hurry, As in a monster film from the 1950s, a fog Of silence filtered in or should I say descended – Not far from the sculpture park and gardens Closing their gates, the globes twinkling out, An attendant with a flashlight swinging his Keys, almost like someone from Victorian London Or gas-lit New York, seemingly taciturn, a man (now a Midwesterner wearing thick glasses) Who’d be heading home to sit with pleasure Beside his fire pit, sip his cider, puff cheroots, In the small meadow of his yard, fringed By ash and elm, few lights of neighbours I woke that morning, he told me, recollecting A quayside in Nova Scotia, where I mused Into the mud at low tide, grubby after camping, Because I no longer had a home or wife, short Of finances ...”