Good Measure: Essays, Interviews, and Notes on Poetry

Robert Morgan, a native of the North Carolina mountains and a widely published poet, has been writing essays about his craft for more than twenty years. This book brings together some of his most thought-provoking pieces, reflections upon poetry from the dual perspective of poet and critic. Morgan begins by examining in succinct and challenging essays the elements of poetry and poetry writing in general, emphasizing the poet's responsibility to provide, as the title suggests, "good measure." Good measure, Morgan cautions, means neither facile spontaneity nor the sort of politicization that most often, he says, forces poets into poses of stylized enlightenment and response. Morgan goes on to discuss specific poets with a craftsman's calm authority. His reflections upon the American tradition in poetry include a tribute to William Cullen Bryant, an illuminating piece on Robinson Jeffers, and studies of the contemporary poets A.R. Ammons, Russell Edson, and Fred Chappell.^ His look at individual poets also includes dazzling close readings of pieces by the French poet Jean Follain. In "The Transfigured Body" and "Mica," Morgan presents excerpts from his own notebooks, meditations jotte