The Power of Less: Essays on Poetry and Public Speech

These essays focus on the absence of the poetic imagination in much contemporary poetry and criticism. The retreat of poets into craft, gender, race, and so on has made poetry seem more like soiciology than literature. Such lack of insight can be attributed to forces in American society that place undue emphasis on technique and identity rather than talent and vision, currently evident as well in contemporary popular music, dance, and art. There is a similar imaginative deficiency in the te...