"Robert Pinsky belongs to that rarest category of talents, a poet-critic."-Robert Lowell
Two important books of criticism by the Pulitzer Prize finalist and former U.S. poet laureate-now combined in a single volume with a new preface by the author
This book brings together two compelling works of criticism by Robert Pinsky-The Situation of Poetry and Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry, in which he makes a passionate and eloquent case for the vital role of poetry in a democracy. Poetry's place in the world may seem small, but its individual, human scale as a fundamentally vocal medium-in which poems are brought to life by one person at a time-gives poetry a unique importance in American and democratic culture and society.
