Talking with Poets: Interviews with Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, Michael Hofmann, and David Ferry.

The five interviews in this book were conducted by students in “The Art of Poetry,” a course that Harry Thomas taught for several years. The students’ depth of knowledge and keenness of insight into the poets’ work is an affirmation of American education. The poets respond to the students with a frankness and feeling of fraternity that mounts at times to a sort of communion.

The poets take up a great range of matters in the interviews the nature of artistic creation, the varieties and diffic...