Hayden Carruth

The balance, appreciation, and clear-eyed sympathy of Hayden Carruth’s 1975 essay on Robert Frost stands as a model for literary critics. His later essays on the blues, Richard Hugo, and Allen Ginsberg are similarly engaged, fair-minded, and human. Not every first-rate poet can write well about poetry, but Carruth was that rare writer who was brilliant both at making poems and discussing them. Adrienne Rich wrote that these essays “keep faith with poetry,” by which she meant that they refuse to simplify or objectify. There is much to be learned from Carruth’s prose as well as his poetry.

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