To find a personal style is, for a writer, to become adult; and to write one's first "perfect" poem--a poem that wholly and successfully embodies that style--is to come of age as a poet. By looking at the precedents, circumstances, and artistry of the first perfect poems composed...
precision, authority, and grace, Vendler helps us to appreciate anew the conception and the practice of poetry, and to observe at first hand the living organism that breathes through the words of a great poem.