Yvor Winters and his last generation of graduate students at Stanford University provide Archambeau (English, Lake Forest College) with examples of American poets who won popular fame and
institutional canonization, and who have never attained wide readership or canonization. The difference is not that some are good poets and some are not, he argues, but--and here he refers to
Gertrude Stein--some write in the cultural vernacular of their time and others write largely outside the law of canonization. His topics are Yvor Winters and a journey into the dark, American
laureate Robert Pinsky, James McMichael caging the demon, statement and image in Robert Hass, the homing poems of John Matthias, and John Peck on the road to Zurich. Annotation 穢2010 Book News,
Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
