A nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, this volume of essays and reviews examines how poets connect with the outer world. Pinsky admires William Carlos Williams who covered the daily life of working-class America even as he experimented with new ideas and techniques and criticized American culture. He discusses the social presence in Marianne Moore's poems, which make them a profound moral force, and Philip Larkin, who too often affects the persona of a cheerfully philistine reactionary. Other poets covered include Philip Frenean, George Oppen, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, and Edward Arlington Robinson. ISBN 0-88001-216-1: $19.95.