These 31 essays... interrogate, dismantle, and ultimately reassemble the history of poetry in the United States. An essential volume that shows how poetry intersects with our lives and vice versa.

Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. A former Guggenheim Fellow and visiting fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford, Parini has published four volumes of poetry, five novels (including The Last Station and Benjamin's Crossing), a critical study of Theodore Roethke, and biographies of John Steinbeck and Robert Frost. The latter won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award for the best work of nonfiction in 1999. He has also edited numerous volumes, including The Norton Anthology of American Autobiography and The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.