Appointments with time: Robert Lowell's poetry through the Notebooks / Frances Ferguson -- How to read Berryman's Dream songs / Edward Mendelson -- The poetry of protest / Robert B. Shaw -- Language against itself: the middle generation of contemporary poets / Alan Williamson -- Diminishing returns: the writings of W.S. Merwin / James Atlas -- John Ashbery: the charity of the hard moments / Harold Bloom -- Frank O'Hara's poetry / Susan Holahan -- Adrienne Rich: the poetics of change / Albert Gelpi -- A note on James Dickey / Michael Mesic -- Staring from her hood of bone: adjusting to Sylvia Plath / J.D. McClatchy -- Another side of this life: women as poets / Peggy Rizza -- James Tate and Sidney Goldfarb and the inexhaustible nature of the murmur / R.D. Rosen -- A conversation with Mark Strand.