One of the dangerous trades : essays on the work and workings of poetry

Online version:

Part I: Perils

One of the dangerous trades

The great predicament of poetry

The refuge of the present tense

The perils of reputation

In quest to have extreme

The great grassy world from both sides: the poetry of Robert Lowell and James Dickey at mid-career

Part II: Admirations

The last word: in remembrance of Alexander Pope

"Quit ye like men": the maturing of Robert Frost

Robert Frost: "I want people to understand me

but I want them to understand me wrong"

Sylvia Plath 1: Ariel

Sylvia Plath 2: Crossing the water

Sylvia Plath 3: Letters home

Sylvia Plath 4: The journals

Sylvia Plath 5: Ariel ascending

Wallace Stevens

"Deep in the blackness of woods": a farewell to Robert Pen Warren

Stanley Kunitz at eighty

The sandpiper poetry of Elizabeth Bishop

The saddest Englishman: Philip Larkin

Part III: Contemporaries

A new generation

L E Sissman: "Did Shriner die or make it to New York?

Space, time, and silence: Merwin, Strand, and Ammons

Visionaries: Kinnell and Wright

Poets of exile and isolation: Walcott, Koch, Simic, and Carruth

The sanity of Human wishes: Robert Hass

Lucia Maria Perillo: Dangerous life

Part IV: Self-appraisal

Poems happen

Praying wrong: an interview

Self-portrait: sources, impacts, decisions