Unrelenting Readers: The New Poet-Critics

As creative writing programs, beginning in the '70s, multiplied, poetry criticism became increasingly chummy, little more than a promotional sideshow. Still, some poets (and the best critics of poetry have always been poets) have always written, against the popular tide, independent, honest, and challenging essays and reviews. Here are fifteen essays by the leading poet-critics of our time, including Rita Dove, Robert Haas, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gluck, Mary Kinzie, Mark Jarman, and others. These unflinching voices make sense at last of our Poetry Wars.