The Sighted Singer

During a week in January 1981 poets Allen Grossman and Mark Halliday met for a series of conversations exploring the meanings for us as poets arising from the difference between us-- differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and poetic style. The result was Against Our Vanishing which Charles Altieri called the best in contemporary poetic thinking. <P>The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers makes available a revised and significantly expanded version of Against Our Vanishing and includes Grossman's recent treatise Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in the Speculative Poetics. This combined edition provides a sophisticated yet accessible discussion-- across generations-- of the fundamental discourse of poetic structure. For students and teachers for writers and readers The Sighted Singer is a splendid introduction to both the tradition of poetry and its contemporary practice.