Character in contemporary American poetry -- American male poetry of sensibility -- Character weakness : mauvaise foi -- Sex and poetry -- Rhetoricity -- The public nature of end-rhymed poems -- The old formalism -- Leonard Nathan : poet as Odysseus -- Ted Kooser : the Chekhov of American poetry -- Richard Hugo's gift to us : the permission of emotional honesty -- The poet as clown -- William Stafford : genius in camouflage -- The judge is fury : the moral urgency of Mary Kinzie's Ghost ship -- Divine honors : Hilda Raz and the music of pain.
