Poems of Oscar Wilde

These poems span Oscar Wilde's entire literary life, from the precocious Oxford student who won the Newdigate Prize with "Ravenna" to the ruined genius composing verses in exile. Here is Wilde unguarded, before the persona and after its destruction. The collection gathers nearly everything he published in his lifetime: the youthful aesthetic declarations of the 1881 collection, verses scattered across magazines, and the later work written after his imprisonment. What emerges is a portrait more intimate than his plays or prose fiction ever offered. Wilde the wit vanishes; Wilde the poet remains, wrestling with beauty, love, loss, and the cruelty of time. The young man who declared "Art is无用" (art is useless) spent his life discovering how desperately we need it. This is essential reading for anyone who thinks they know Wilde, because it reveals the man his famous irony so successfully concealed.