Next-to-last Things New Poems and Essays

This volume contains 13 new poems and nine essays on poets and the art of poetry, on painters and the art of life. It also includes an interview reprinted from the Paris Review coinciding with the author's 80th birthday. The poet offers stirring essays on Robert Lowell, John Keats, Walt Whitman and Philip Guston, as well as notes on his own poem, "The Abduction." The final section, "Seedcorn and Windfall," includes the poet's aphorisms and views on Theodore Roethke, Chekov and Konstantin Paustovsky, and on topics ranging from the state to death. Throughout, the author explores the depths of his own being. ISBN 0-87113-036-X: $17.95.