Robert Pinsky,The Poet's Task in Critical Inquiry (Spring 1987), 5801 Ellis Ave., Chicago, Dl. 60637.
Many contemporary poets, says Pinsky, an English professor at the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley, suffer from a particularly modem disease- "Poetry Gloom." Faced with sparse and diminishing audiences for their work, poets have "mysterious disaffections" and "querulous doubts" about the validity of their art. To whom, Pinsky asks, should poets be responsi- ble?...