# “Peters’ criticism is not maternal. . . insights are set down simply, unornamented, as if intended to glance off, and yet I think they are important, and belong to the center. . . The book deserves numerous readers, particularly among young poets dissatisfied with the celebrities who keep writing the same poem over and over again. . . [His] essay on Creeley is superb; the best essay on his work I know.” — Robert Bly on the first Great American Poetry Bakeoff in American Book Review # “ Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly "It's hard to dislike a poetry critic who chooses to discuss John Ashbery in the form of a mock-colloquy between two overeducated characters named Dick and Jane ("Reaming eucalyptus roots from sewer lines is simpler than deciphering Ashbery," Dick asserts). Peters ( Poems, Selected and New ) takes a refreshingly unacademic approach to the assessment of contemporary American poetry; these essays, representing his work of the last quarter century, try to cut a path through the "safe forms, safe language, safe themes" that in his opinion have clogged the scene. His correctives--positive proselytizing, witty naysaying, and the mixed review--are imaginative. Interspersed with pieces addressing a broad range of writers--Tess Gallagher, Allen Ginsberg--are more thematic chapters that inspect and assail opening lines in poems and (in "Biopsies") question the hows and whys of Language Poetry. Peters is openly impatient with failure and pretension, and he makes no effort to sound a representative note. In his view of criticism, consensus seems not to be the point. That's partly why his views are both arguable and bracing." Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description This book collects, in a single volume, the best of Robert Peters' fearless, impassioned, and often hilarious assessments of contemporary American poetry. Included are some thirty-five essays and reviews on such major figures as Robert Bly, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Diane Wakowski, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Tess Gallager, Gary Snyder, Jack Spicer, and W. S. Merwin, as well as commentaries on many lesser-known poets.