The Soul Is a Stranger in This World: Essays on Poets and Poetry

The Soul Is a Stranger in This World is a timely examination of some of the best modern and contemporary poets and a trenchant defense of poetry as a narrative musical and theological art. While it is common today to view the poet as a revolutionary who breaks old forms in the name of aesthetic and political freedom this volume begins with the classical view of the poet as a man speaking to men as Wordsworth put it. Poetry may challenge and shock but it also consoles probing the contours of the human soul in a broken world. Collected from essays and reviews first published in The Wall Street Journal The New Criterion Books and Culture First Things and other outlets the volume traces these concerns in the work of modern masters such as Rilke and Eliot avant-garde exemplars like Andre du Bouchet and Basil Bunting and contemporary writers such as Dana Gioia and Franz Wright.