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 differences between us-differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and poetic styles." The result was Against Our Vanishing, which Charles Altieri called "the best in contemporary poetic thinking."

The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers makes available a revised and significantlyexpanded version of Against Our Vanishing and includes Grossman's recent treatise "Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetry." 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.