In "The Human Face," an impassioned poem-essay in Burns's most celebrated poetic form, Iain Crichton Smith evokes the democratic spirit of Burns in an age starved of tolerance and clarity. This is the poet's most ambitious and risky poem to date. It has the humane scope and sweep of the major poems of MacDiarmid and MacLean, and it is by their measure that Smith must now be appraised. Douglas Dunn wrote in "The Times Literary Supplement" of 'that purity, that touch of originality, which marks poetry at the limits of intuition and imagining.' Robert Nye in "The Times" declared of the "Collected Poems" 'Crichton Smith's net is quite wide, but its meshes are splendidly small, and he is always catching more than he probably intended.'
- ISBN10 1857542517
- ISBN13 9781857542516
- Publish Date 26 September 1996
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 August 2015
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 64
- Language English