It’s not the first thing I read when I open PN Review. My eye slides to the left to scan the contents list, and see if I’m going to meet enough old pals to be permitted to stay in my comfy slippers and jogging-bottoms. Next, I take a quick bracing dip into the Editorial, knowing I’ll come back later for the slower, closer reading it’s owed. And then comes the dream-state of News & Notes, and my favourite yew-shaded walkway – the obituaries.

It’s fitting that there’s no specific signpost. Death is News, of the most ordinary and the most shocking kind. The PN Review format equalises death-news with events like award-winning, and it tends to equalise reputations. Comparison is underplayed. Insularity is questioned. The poetry-enablers as well as the poets are honoured.

Of course, I experience a stomach-turning jolt at seeing familiar names – poets I know slightly or, more likely, since I know few poets, poets whose work I know. But, in a melancholy kind of way, I enjoy seeing the architecture of a life and a life’s work compressed so elegantly and finally.

I take obituaries more seriously than I take reviews, or perhaps less impatiently. The critical assessment is not so exact as to exclude a non-reader of the work. Although usually an enthusiast for the subject, the obituarist is a reticent one. There’s no need for market-credible hyperbole. The obit confirms its status as a medium of trust.

The scope of the PN Review obit is a major asset. It’s like an international conference, where you’re awed to shake hands with major writers ...