The Rivered Earth, by Vikram Seth (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99)
Gathering together four libretti written by Seth and set to music by Alec Roth, this haunting book opens with an evocative account of the chances and decisions that brought each to fruition. The first libretto, "Songs in Time of War", is a compilation of 11 poems taken from Seth's translations of the 8th-century Chinese poet Du Fu. The language has a remarkably direct, almost naive fullness of rhythm and rhyme ("From Changan walls white-headed crows took flight / And cawed upon the Western Gate at night"). The second libretto offers a tribute to George Herbert, inspired in part by Seth's experience of living in Herbert's former home, the Old Rectory at Bemerton, and including a touching version of Herbert's sonnet "Prayer 1". If the more fragmented third libretto feels less successful as a reading experience, this is more than made up for by the fourth, in which Seth's extraordinary sense of lyricism comes into play again ("Here in the urn lies ash, / Dust uninfused with breath: / Burnt wood, burnt bone, burnt flesh, / The powdered clay of death").

The Salt Book of Younger Poets, edited by Roddy Lumsden and Eloise Stonborough (Salt, £10.99)
This ambitious anthology offers a rewarding glimpse into the health of current poetry, bringing together 50 poets aged from 18 to 26 who have yet to publish their first full-length collection. It's a coup for the editors to have found work of such potential. What is immediately striking is the extraordinary range and variety presented here, from the colloquial energy and playfulness of Ashna Sarkar ("Trawlerman is the most southerly chippie in North Weezy / to do chips with onion gravy") to Andrew Jamison's mock-casual meditation on Northern Irish life ("touching down to a province of 'politics' – / we'd call it something else if there was a word for it"), from Oli Hazzard's deft Ashbery-influenced manoeuvres to Jay Bernard's compelling "11.16", which bitterly reworks graffiti in a station toilet to evoke Larkin's famous opening lines: "They fuck you up the government / You may not know it but they see / That you're a mug and so you'll spend / Nine grand on what they got for free."