There can be no doubt that Hayden Carruth is one of the pre-eminent
American poets of the late twentieth century. In these poems written
since publication of his Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, which won
the National Book Critics Circle Award, he speaks with intimate and
urgent clarity of love late in life, and in heartrending poems addresses
his daughter's struggle against cancer. In others he engages the loves,
friendships, and social concerns of a lifetime. With passion and pathos
and great good humor, in poems that could only be written by a mature
poet at the height of his powers, Carruth achieves a nobility of vision
that is rare in any age.