Originally written as introductions to poetry and fiction readings, these miniature essays span three decades of acute listening, absorption, and response. In two to four pages Boyers manages to encapsulate an entire career, expressing in lively and entertaining language his own assessments of the work at hand. Because it is far more difficult to critically praise a body of work than to find fault with it, these pieces, which are unabashedly celebratory, are welcome relief from the usual critical fare. Essential reading for anyone teaching or writing the very short essay.

REVIEWS & COMMENTS

"From Ben Belitt to Jorie Graham to Robert Lowell, from Lee K. Abbott to Marilynne Robinson to Susan Sontag, Robert Boyers offers us 'the best' of each novelist and poet presented in this work of praise. This is a book for writers, readers, and teachers, for the literary critic and the biographer and historian." —Jessica Powers, NewPages.com

“Robert Boyers is one of the few critics writing today who, by keeping his head about the claims of this or that modern poet or novelist, keeps our interest in them alive. Shrewd and sensible in his judgements, he can be very funny as well, not at the expense of the author under discussion, but to reveal something about the writer’s predicament, and our own. In this he reminds me of two critics who, however different, had something of his same power–C. S. Lewis and Randall Jarrell.” —John Bayley

“Robert Boyers is a highly individual literary critic, usefully eclectic in his approaches, whether to contemporary novels… or poems. I find him most stimulating and original, and… challenging to my own assumptions.” —Harold Bloom