The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues – compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious – are far from conventionally heroic.

The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues – compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious – are far from conventionally heroic.