as a college student in the 1970s I was taught to read closely and to admire a coterie of contemporary poets, mostly male, who were deemed important and who no doubt expected to be read with care. For better and worse those days are transformed utterly, and what we have instead is the terrible beauty of another scene—far more diverse, sometimes less vital, little of it written or read with exacting standards. In fact poets and critics who claim to uphold standards for their arts are now thought of as cranks or cuckoos. What sets the best of them apart is the same quality ezra Pound identified in his definition of a classic: “a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.” It is the presence of vitality, not “correctness” of any kind that makes writing last— though Pound’s word eternal now seems muddleheaded, since immortality is impossible to predict. What I can confidently assert is that a great many books of poetry and criticism that come my way prove soporific in the extreme. I seek voices that will cast a compelling spell, or at least wake me up with language of beauty, precision, vitality. difficulty, in my judgment, need not be a criterion, nor is it a barrier as long as some surface allure has caught me. Vulgar enticements like story are also welcome. I see my job as being alert to freshness where I find it, but I prefer voices that arrive with confidence and command, more than those that are slovenly or accidental or mumbling. Most important I can admire writers with whom I disagree, as I occasionally do with William logan. logan is one of the few critics alive who has the courage to be loathed. sometimes he deserves it, acidly scoring points against a book he has not bothered to understand, but at his best he remains an indispensable critic. Other