On Poetry, Culture, and Democracy (Princeton Essays in Literature)

“Robert Pinsky belongs to that rarest category of talents, a poet-critic.”-Robert LowellTwo important books of criticism by the Pulitzer Prize finalist and former U.S. poet laureate-now combined in a single volume with a new preface by the authorThis book brings together two compelling works of criticism by Robert Pinsky-The Situation of Poetry and Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry, in which he makes a passionate and eloquent case for the vital role of poetry in a democracy.Poetry’s individual, human scale as a fundamentally vocal medium-with poems brought to life by one person at a time-gives poetry a unique, neglected importance in American and democratic culture and society.