Allen Grossman / Mark Halliday
During a week in January 1981, poets Allen Grossman and Mark Halliday met for a series of conversations exploring 'the meanings for us as poets arising from the difference between us-- differences of generation and education as well as of temperament and poetic style.' The result was 'Against Our Vanishing', which Charles Altieri called ' the best in contemporary poetic thinking.' 'The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers' makes available a revised and significantly expanded version of 'Against Our Vanishing' and includes Grossman’s recent treatise 'Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in the Speculative Poetics'. This combined edition provides a sophisticated yet accessible discussion-- across generations-- of 'the fundamental discourse of poetic structure'. For students and teachers, for writers and readers, 'The Sighted Singer' is a splendid introduction to both the tradition of poetry and its contemporary practice.
