Contents
Introduction
Part One: Heresy and the American Ideal
Heresy and the American Ideal: On T. R. Hummer
To Advantage Dressed: Miller Williams among the Naked Poets
Part Two: Culture, Inclusion, Craft
Culture, Inclusion, Craft (On Albert Goldbarth, Jane Kenyon, Li-Young Lee, Wayne Koestenbaum, David Wojahn, Alice Fulton)
The Push of Reading (On Jorie Graham, Carol Muske, Sherod Santos, A. R. Ammons)
Framed in Words (On Louis MacNeice, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland)
Part Three: Kinds of Knowing
Smarts (On Susan Howe, Andrew Hudgins, Mark Doty, Lynda Hull, Billy Collins)
Kinds of Knowing (On Eric Pankey, Louise Glück, Linda Bierds)
Plainness and Sufficiency (On April Bernard, Susan Hahn, Lynne McMahon, Donald Revell, Rodney Jones)
Line by Line (On Donna Masini, Donald Platt, ’Annah Sobelman, Arthur Smith, Deborah Digges, Elizabeth Spires)
Part Four: Probable Reason, Possible Joy
Probable Reason, Possible Joy (On Henri Coulette, Diane di Prima, June Jordan)
On Restraint (On Ted Kooser, Charles Simic, Galway Kinnell, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Charles Wright)
Romantic Melancholy, Romantic Excess (On Linda Gregerson, Stephen Dunn, Sharon Olds, Stanley Plumly, Robert Hass)
Part Five: Hieroglyphs of Erasure
Against Mastery: Adrienne Rich and Philip Levine
The Crux of the Matter: David Wojahn
The Romance of Betrayal: David St. John
Hieroglyphs of Erasure: Albert Goldbarth
Afterword: On Explication
“Still-Hildreth Sanatorium, 1936”
Index