"Portions of this book appeared in various forms in American poetry, Poetry, and Poets & writers"--T.p. verso.

The award-winning poet Carl Phillips's invaluable essays on poetry, the tenth volume in the celebrated Art of series of books on the craft of writing In seven i

Dean Young's poems are as entertaining and imaginative as a three-ring circus painted by Hieronymous Bosch

"In Young's work, the big essential questions—mortality, identity, the meaning of life—aren't simply food for thought; they're grounds for entertainment."�

Poems inspire our trust, argues James Longenbach in this bracing work, because they don't necessarily ask to be trusted. Theirs is the language of self-question