J. D. McClatchy is the author of four collections of poems: Scenes from Another Life, Stars Principal, The Rest of the Way, and "Ten Commandments." His literary essays are collected in White Paper, which won the Melville Cane Award granted by the Poetry Society of America. He is the editor of The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and has served, since 1991, as the editor of the Yale Review. Named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1996, he received an award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991. He lives in New York City.

No American poet critic... has written such beautiful prose or wielded such manifold and supple terms of analysis. McClatchy analyzes poetry as only a poet could, with an insider's knowledge of the craft-and of the terror of the blank page. Los Angeles Times The full force of [McClatchy's] probing intelligence and emotional insight catches us up with infectious gusto... T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Allen Tate, Howard Nemerov, Louise Bogan, and Randall Jarrell all commaded adminration for their essays and their verse. McClatchy belongs in this select company, and his skills in one mode complement his gifts in the other. The New Leader In this time of literary 'scattering,'when many poets admire and practice techniques of fragmentation, McClatchy's voice resounds with urbanity, clarity, deadly wit. The power of this civil tongue is classical, expository, the voice of the integrated psyche. San Francisco Chronicle It's no surprise to find in Twenty Questions qualities that have always distinguished J.D. McClatchy's work: sparkling intelligence; learning; an informed immersion in the poetry of our time... In a noble tradition of the essay, he chooses to write about the writers who interest him, personally, not always part of the familiar academic canon... A generous, bracing collection. -- Robert Pinsky Charming, genial, but altogether accomplished. -- Kate Fullbrook Journal of American Studies

• Reading Dreaming My Fountain Pen Commonplaces Twenty Questions Reading Pope Aspects of "Battle-Piece" Woman in White Wildness Asking for Ceremony At Her Other Desk Laughter in the Soul Songs of a Curmudgeon The Exile's Song Chiselled Breath Sitting Here Strangely on Top of the Sunlight The Lost Upland Encountering the Sublime Braving the Elements Masters The Art of Poetry

J. D. McClatchy is the author of four collections of poems: Scenes from Another Life, Stars Principal, The Rest of the Way, and "Ten Commandments." His literary essays are collected in White Paper, which won the Melville Cane Award granted by the Poetry Society of America. He is the editor of The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry and The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and has served, since 1991, as the editor of the Yale Review. Named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1996, he received an award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991. He lives in New York City.

No American poet critic... has written such beautiful prose or wielded such manifold and supple terms of analysis. McClatchy analyzes poetry as only a poet could, with an insider's knowledge of the craft-and of the terror of the blank page. Los Angeles Times The full force of [McClatchy's] probing intelligence and emotional insight catches us up with infectious gusto... T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Allen Tate, Howard Nemerov, Louise Bogan, and Randall Jarrell all commaded adminration for their essays and their verse. McClatchy belongs in this select company, and his skills in one mode complement his gifts in the other. The New Leader In this time of literary 'scattering,'when many poets admire and practice techniques of fragmentation, McClatchy's voice resounds with urbanity, clarity, deadly wit. The power of this civil tongue is classical, expository, the voice of the integrated psyche. San Francisco Chronicle It's no surprise to find in Twenty Questions qualities that have always distinguished J.D. McClatchy's work: sparkling intelligence; learning; an informed immersion in the poetry of our time... In a noble tradition of the essay, he chooses to write about the writers who interest him, personally, not always part of the familiar academic canon... A generous, bracing collection. -- Robert Pinsky Charming, genial, but altogether accomplished. -- Kate Fullbrook Journal of American Studies

• Reading Dreaming My Fountain Pen Commonplaces Twenty Questions Reading Pope Aspects of "Battle-Piece" Woman in White Wildness Asking for Ceremony At Her Other Desk Laughter in the Soul Songs of a Curmudgeon The Exile's Song Chiselled Breath Sitting Here Strangely on Top of the Sunlight The Lost Upland Encountering the Sublime Braving the Elements Masters The Art of Poetry