It is no secret that our own times are inimical to the imagination. Technology has put art to the rout. The concept of fame has been degraded, replaced by the notion of celebrity, and poetry is recognized as an expedient and sometimes eloquent way to hasten the aims of social justice on the one hand and of marketing strategies on the other. Poetry consists of irreproachable sentiment rendered in bite-sized pieces, doggerel for an inaugural. Or it is a rhymed injunction to the jury, or a rock singer’s wail. Or perhaps it is something in the air of a hip, dark underground cafe that can help sell blue jeans. How precious at such a time is true poetry, which resists the blandishments of celebrity culture, is impatient with pretense and piety, and remembers that the gratuitousness of a work of art is its grace. If reality is indistinguishable from the consumerism and mass thinking that the mass media foster, there is an urgent need for a poetry that can press back against the pressures of reality…

— David Lehman