The shape of things : six new American poets

'All of the poets represented here are interested in formal metre, what it does and what can be done with it; the pleasure principle is strong in their work (this despite some very bleak, desolate, and even at times horrific subject matter) - Their poems are full of the world, and the ways that it resists our hopes and expectations; they are among the most unsolipsistic contemporary poets I'm aware of.

Their technique turns their attention outward, not inward, despite the fact that a distinctive inwardness is easily discernible in the work of all of them.' - from the Introduction.