Every Changing Shape: Mystical Experiences and the Making of Poems, by Elizabeth Jennings (Carcanet, £9,95 in UK)

A fine poet herself, and a believing Christian, Elizabeth Jennings here investigates the phenomenon of mystical experience and its workings on the (mainly creative) imagination. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Herbert and Vaughan, Hopkins, Rilke, Peguy, Simone Weil, and certain 20 century English and American poets (Eliot, Stevens, Hart Crane, David Gascoyne) are all brought under gentle but searching scrutiny. Though the work is over 30 years old, it has not dated in any real sense and is a deeply considered series of interlinked essays which would bear several rereadings.