The best recent poetry – review roundup

Apocalypse: An Anthology edited by James Keery; The Disguise: Selected Poems by Charles Boyle; Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips; Slim New Book by Leontia Flynn

Poets are first hypotheses, then facts, then values, said Randall Jarrell. The great mistake we make with poets of the past is to assume their current reputation equals stage three of this paradigm. In reality, it is never too late to adjust the canonical standing of the dead, as Apocalypse: An Anthology (Carcanet, £19.99), edited by James Keery, reminds us. His title references the New Apocalypse (1939) anthology edited by JF Hendry and the successor he co-edited with Henry Treece, but the focus of Apocalypse goes well beyond wartime.