Not Mushroom ....

.... for four caps on the cover of Penguin Modern Poets 8. :)

I've been photographing a stand of amethyst deceiver mushrooms every day for a while. They're gradually losing their gemstone colour so I decided to feature one today. When I picked it I immediately thought of the cover of the Penguin book designed by Alan Spain. Why he chose mushrooms for the poems of Edwin Brock, Geoffrey Hill and Stevie Smith I don't know. Symbols of the Sixties like 'beehive girls' aren't modern anymore. 

Amethyst deceivers are edible but I don't fancy trying one. I've included three other mushrooms that I haven't identified. I came across this by Sylvia Plath whilst researching:

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.

Our foot's in the door.