When Chris McCully's first book of poems, Time Signatures (Carcanet, 1993), appeared, the Observer described the poet as a keen fly-fisher, a translator of Old English poetry and an expert prosodist; and these skills have miraculously combined so that almost every poem alights on the surface of the reader's mind with absolute integrity, judgment, and profound allure'. McCully was, it added, a major poet in the making'. In Not only I, a collection of love poems, he begins to fulfil that promise. His international reputation as a linguist, philologist, writer and theorist informs the collection, from the choice of inevitable structures to the explored cultural and individual difficulties of desire and loss. In this generous-and often wry-book, a poetic talent comes to maturity and finds its achieved voice.