Poetry as Persuasion

CARL DENNIS is the author of seven books of poetry, including, most recently, Practical Gods, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, in 2000 he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Association for his contribution to American poetry. He is a professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a sometime member of the faculty of the MFA program in creative writing at Warren Wilson College.

With Whitman and Dickinson as his touchstones and contemporary American poetry as his specific purview, Carl Dennis brilliantly demonstrates in Poetry as Persuasion why poetic voice is essential to the process of lyric articulation. Dennis's essays are particularly useful to poets learning their craft and to students of poetry, but every reader will find delight in the calm and lucid intelligence each page holds.