We’ve had poets before who wrote little poetry. The short-lived Chidiock Tichborne, for example, and other minor poets who managed a single memorable poem. Or T.S. Eliot and Philip Larkin, who kept a tight watch on their publications and whose collected poems did not form a large volume. And then there’s Thomas Gray (1716–1771) — a poet who occupies a serious place in any standard list of English poets, while publishing only 13 poems in his lifetime.