Shibboleth (Oxford Paperbacks)

The title poem of this collection looks at the linguistic initiation rites of soldiers. "One didn't know the name of Tarzan's monkey," it begins. Yet two verses later: "The morning of the first snowfall, I was shaving. Staring into a mirror nailed to a tree. Intoning the Christian names of the Andrews Sisters. 'Maxine, Laverne, Patty.'" The other entries are similarly inventive. Shibboleth won England's Whitbread Prize in 1989.