A highly rewarding set of essay reviews, which covers a lot of literary poetic ground.--Clark Allison, Tears in the Fence

Friend of John Cage and John Ashbery, indefatigable explainer of the avant-garde, Marjorie Perloff is a critic of international standing whose close readings analyze modernist seriousness as well as postmodernist playfulness, relishing especially the radical difficulty of the Language Poets she has long championed. . . . Her observation that 'the book review is by definition the site of controversy' rings true, as does her wish for the best literary criticism to be 'always, in the end, both evaluative and engaged.' The latter words certainly apply to her own.--Jules Smith, Times Literary Supplement

Friend of John Cage and John Ashbery, indefatigable explainer of the avant-garde, Marjorie Perloff is a critic of international standing whose close readings analyze modernist seriousness as well as postmodernist playfulness, relishing especially the radical difficulty of the Language Poets she has long championed. . . . Her observation that 'the book review is by definition the site of controversy' rings true, as does her wish for the best literary criticism to be 'always, in the end, both evaluative and engaged.' The latter words certainly apply to her own.--Jules Smith, Times Literary Supplement

This collection is a record of one of the best and most influential critical minds in contemporary poetry and poetics. It is both timely and timeless.--Yunte Huang, author of Transpacific Imaginations: History, Literature, Counterpoetics