Examines the poetics of Richard Hugo, William Stafford, Donald Hall, and Robert Bly. Proposes that these poets are associated more with European and South American literature than with the poetry previously written in the United States and England. Discusses what these poets tell others about language and about writing poetry. (RL)

Many students think of poetry as a meaning to be figured out, a puzzle to be solved--as if poets were forever doomed to write only what they never quite mean and to mean what they never actually write. The struggle to discover meaning becomes acute with that distinctly modern poetry created by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and their…