'The title allusion is to ‘Death, an Ode,’ by John Forbes, who died in 1998. The ‘nerves’ referred to in the poem are directed towards the advent of ‘our beautiful century,’ meaning the twentieth. Most of the poet subjects in this feature did not get to see how beautiful the twentyfirst is. The articles that follow are responses to a request for essays on the poets and poetry of the 1980s and 90s: there was no suggestion they all be about the dead. But that is what happened.' (Michael Farrell : Introduction)
2018