Book excerpt: This series of critical pieces is variously structured, with conventional essays, extended meditations, and short analytic notes appealing to differing tastes. Indeed, the diverse format constitutes a secondary thesis: like the artists about whom they write, literary critics are obliged to discover (and execute, of course) the form best suited to convey the content. The material in this case consists of meticulous close readings of authors almost spanning the alphabetical spectrum: from Akhmatova to Yeats; from Blake and Borges to Williams and Wittgenstein – and likewise, ranging over centuries: the sixteenth through the twentieth. Shakespeare and the Modernists largely figure in these musings, which illuminate, entertain, and genuinely engage. As T.S. Eliot remarked, “Our talking about poetry is an extension of our experience of it; and as a good deal of thinking has gone to the making of poetry, so a good deal may go to the study of it.”