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This article focuses on the style of Helen Vendler as a literary critic. It states that Vendler has the right to engage herself in the passionate examination of lyric poems that offer a good measure of emotional excitement and intellectual richness. It mentions that Vendler reads poetry in its genuine sense of reading and poetry and sees the poems as it is and not associate it with psychology or politics. Vendler is considered to be at her best among modern critics in reviewing challenging poems from the Renaissance period until the modern times. Vendler's literary criticisms on the works of W. B. Yeats and other poets are also discussed.

This article focuses on the career of American poet Donald E. Stanford. It states that before his death, he left a critical book that is centered on his lifelong study of English poetry written during the life of Robert Bridges. His scholarship provided him with knowledge of a literary world in transition from the Victorian era into the contemporary period. Stanford sketched the lives of Mary Louisa Woods, Mary Coleridge and Sir Henry Newbolt and discussed details of their poetry, fiction and criticism. His biographical accounts present an engaging scene of the literary world of England. He believed that the literati of England contributed to the literary culture of the transition period from Victorianism to Modernism.

This article focuses on the career of American poet Ezra Pound. It mentions that Pound has the desire to write the greatest poems before he dies. Pound studied romance languages and classics while in college and wrote intellectual poems that were ignored by publishers. He decided to go to Europe because he felt that his country did not recognized his talents. He worked for Elkin Mathews, a bookseller and publisher of books that promoted decadent and symbolists poets. Mathews liked Pound for his self-confidence and eccentricity and introduced him to the literati that visited his place. Pound's real contribution to modernist literature was his recognition and promotion of modernist writers.

The article critiques the influence of romanticism on modern poetry. It addresses the possibility of the self as poetic subject, arguments presented in the book "The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery," by Laura Quinney, and explores the details about the essay "Poems of Pure Imagination," by Lesa Carnes Corrigan.

This article discusses how the author Yvor Winters uses poetry as a means of establishing the principles of the fallacy of narrative form in his book "In Defense of Reason." In the opening section, the critic Randall Jarell mentions Winters' insights that art should increase the intelligence and strengthen the moral temper. Winters also declares his position as an "absolutist" as believing in "the existence of absolute truths and values," as opposing a wrong-headed romantic relativism. Underlying these principles and points is a rejection of art as imitation or monitoring. Winters agrees that the essence of art lies in man's rational capacity, his ability to see relations between parts. For the author, techniques for rationalization occur in contemporary experimental verse, and depending on the relations of language to subject, range, and form. He distinguishes four kinds of poets; second-rate, major, primitive, and decadent.

The article discusses American poetry. Reading new poetry is not easy. Some poets strive for the clarity of prose, but many more strive to avoid it, other (and greater) virtues seeming to demand such avoidance. One could even classify poets according to the devices they use not to be too easily comprehensible, different devices implying different purposes. Geoffrey Hill's poetry has a rich suggestive music: its difficulty comes from the absence of signposts, so that, amid all that resonance, people are unsure of the logical paths. With modern poetry, the reader must learn to trample a path for himself; then, on returning to the poem, he may find the path obliterated and have to trample another. But in the end some paths must be established, or the poem is a mere chaos. And unless, on a first reading, there is an immediate feel of richness, people may not persist in their trampling. The book "The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy," like all Hill's poetry, needs to grow slowly in the reader's mind.

The article discusses contemporary poetry with reference to ten new poets. Contrary to the opinions of many people, otherwise literate, who do not read contemporary poetry, this art is not in a dry season rather it is flourishing. Since a great many books of poetry are published every year, the problem for those who would like to keep up is to find where to begin. Here are ten first books, all published within the past two years. Few generalizations can be made that would encompass the variety of form, attitude, and purpose evident in this group. What is striking is that ten first books of such high quality should appear within this short period of time. These poets are more knowledgeable about their art, more conversant with the different possibilities available to them, less parochial, more sophisticated than might have been expected twenty, or ten, years ago. Perhaps our much-maligned creative writing programs should be given credit for this higher level of professionalism, since most of the poets being considered here have studied in such programs.

Presents the poem "Monet," by James Baker Hall.

Presents three poems "Tarn," "Ffion, Fox gloves, Field Trumpets," "Geese on the Genesee," by Michael Mott.

Presents the poem "View from Boggeragh Mountains," by Ralph Black.

Presents the poem "Cadenza," by Ralph Black.

Presents the poem "Balconies of the Coffee Houses," by Laurence Lieberman.

Presents the poem "Prodigies," by John Reed.

Presents the poem "A High Wind," by John Reed.

Presents the poem "Capuchin Catacombs," by John Reed.

Presents the poem "The Coiffure," by Robert Beum.

Presents the poem "Notes Toward an Inventory," by Robert Beum.

Presents the poem "The Mask of Waking," by Richard Behm.