As the assistant literary editor of The New Republic, and later as the book critic for the New York Sun, the poet-critic Adam Kirsch has written a constant stream of articles on contemporary poetry as influential as any in recent years. These pieces, which weighed the value of poets as diverse as Derek Walcott, Sharon [...]

As Reviewed By: John Drexel Barrier of a Common Language: An American Looks at Contemporary British Poetry by Dana Gioia. University of Michigan Press, 2003. Paper: $16.95 Although the notion is rarely articulated openly, there is a tacit assumption in most anthologies and criticism [in the United States] that in the past century American poetry-vigorous, [...]