The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1

Jonathan Swift wrote poetry the way a surgeon wields a scalpel: precisely, without mercy, and always with a diagnosis in mind. This volume gathers verses that span decades of his furious, brilliant career, from the mock-heroic battles with literary rivals to the stark, unsettling meditations on mortality that make "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" one of the most chilling poems in the English language. Here you will find Swift at his most vicious (the attacks on political opponents), his most vulnerable (the loneliness of the Dean of St Patrick's, watching Dublin burn in 1720), and his most absurd (the celebrated exchange with Pope about who would die first, conducted entirely in verse). The collection captures not the sanitized satirist of textbook summaries but a man who understood that laughter and bitterness often sound identical. For readers who discovered Gulliver's Travels as children and only later grasped its nihilistic fury, these poems reveal the same intelligence operating at maximum intensity.