Journal of 21st-century Writings LITERATURE BOOK REVIEW Volume 3, Number 1 C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings © Gylphi Limited, Canterbury, UK ISSN 2045-5216 (Print) ISSN 2045-5224 (Online) | 03_01| 2014 (115–118) http://www.gylphi.co.uk/c21 Fiona Sampson, Beyond the Lyric: A Map of Contemporary British Poetry, London: Chatto & Windus, 2012, ISBN: 9780701186463 (pbk), 320pp., £16.99. ‘This is a book of enthusiasms. Unlike the American modernist Marianne Moore, who famously wrote that “I, too, dislike it”, I love contemporary poetry’ (1). So begins Fiona Sampson’s attempt ‘to map’ the ‘tremendous richness and variety’ of British verse (2). Sampson’s introduction, sen- sibly, goes on to eschew tribalism – the ‘unending Punch and Judy of “That’s the way to do it” rival positions’ (8) – and to claim to focus on close reading without which ‘critical writing [ ... ] muffles, rather than clarifies’ (4). Readers familiar with Moore though might have already raised an eyebrow at the misuse of a subtle and ironic poem for rhetori- cal convenience and sadly this becomes something of a pattern for the book; Sampson is sometimes happy to neglect context, close reading, or even the facts, if they interfere with the way she wants to present her enthusiasms. The book is organized ‘according to the kinds of poetry’ poets write (8). The categories Sampson groups writers into are sometimes inspired by form (the ‘Iambic Legislators’), sometimes by place or coterie (the ‘Ox- ford Elegists’) or by vague sense of style (‘the dandy poem which carries a swagger-stick under its arm, exploits rather than struggles against its own inherent artifice’) (38). There is actually something quite refreshing in this sort of idiosyncratic enthusiast’s taxonomy. The trouble is that the categories are often ill-defined and poorly explained and the cracks which Sampson has papered over quickly begin to show.