In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination: Essays, 1980-1991

Alan Shapiro is not only a much-lauded poet but also one of America's most intelligent and clearheaded thinkers about poetry. In Praise of the Impure collects his passionate, rigorously argued essays on the situation of poetry in American culture today.

"Shapiro has produced work of such authority and originality that he has permanently enlarged my hopes and expectations for contemporary poetry." --Tom Sleigh, Boston Review