Not a lot, all told and given her purposes; the books sold well for a reason.
But they have a devastating fault, at least for any writing that hopes to last and be described as literature, as poetry. They are transparent. You always know what she meant.
And of course there are real monsters, grotesque failures that don’t bear quotation (see “Two”, Poems (London, not dated), 296-7). Everything a nauseated first-time reader might report is probably often true in her pages, but there are virtues as well, and not mere saving graces, for the verse is genuinely well made. Indeed, if anything disgusts the sophisticated reader it is the simple ease with which the sentiments are revealed, leaving no room for the critic to pretend that they are otherwise than the well-trodden common ground of humanity.
Then again, who would, for example, think of this; describing the meadow (drearily, the archetype of woman) longing to be ravished by the mountain (words fail us… the archetype of man), but separated by a mighty and impassable river:
What could the meadow do but look and yearn,
And gem its bosom to conceal despair.
(“Attraction”, Poems (London, not dated), p. 63)
Perhaps it was obvious: at the front of the collected edition that I happen to have in hand, we find this:
