Dr. Williams's Paterson -- Stevens as essayist -- Write little; do it well -- Without the inventions of sorrow -- To fashion the transitory -- The closest permissible approximation -- Poets without prophecy -- Multiple disguises -- Pursy Windhum Lucigen -- Upon which to rejoice -- Ezra Pound and the great style -- Materials from life -- Delmore, 1913-1966 -- A meaning of Robert Lowell -- A turn in the rhyme -- Melancholy monument -- Spenser and his modern critics -- The writer's situation -- A focus, a crown -- Poet of civility -- Seriousness and the inner poem -- Fallacies of silence -- A location of J.V. Cunningham -- Robert Frost -- The sun's progeny -- Italian sensibility -- Pact of blood -- The question of poetic form -- The act of love: poetry and personality -- The man in the box at Walden -- Our man in Twit'nam -- Three notes on the versewriting of Alexander Pope -- Chants, oracles, body-rhythms -- The spirit of Lo Lenga d'òc -- Notes on meter -- Notes on metaphor -- With respect to the infuriating pervasiveness of optimism -- Paul Goodman and the grand community -- Richard Hugo -- David Ignatow -- Tom McGrath is harvesting the snow -- The blues as poetry --Mystery and expressiveness -- Duncan's dream -- What does organic mean -- Lear -- Emily Dickinson's unexpectedness -- Essays for Wendell -- James Laughlin -- The nature of art -- A further note on Lear -- God sniffed and said.