ABSTRACT
It is probable that such feelings would be confirmed rather than undermined by a casual perusal of the present collection. Those who have been brought up on the writings of modern literary critics are likely to find a number of features of the poets’ reponses to their art strange and offputting. Moreover, they are likely to be struck by the extent to which these offputting features are common to the writings of poets of widely different temperaments, backgrounds, and historical periods. First-time readers of this anthology might thus soon begin to feel that they were confronting a body of convictions about poetry and the criticism of poetry that flew in the face of everything that their own literary education and experience had led them to expect.
