Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry Stephen Dunn BOA Editions, Ltd. Available from Powell's.

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Thanks to my friend's praise of Dunn, I was eager to read Walking Light, a reprint edition (including five new essays) of a respected though long out-of-print collection. But, hold: A collection of essays. On poetry. By a poet. In a perfect world, such books would always be treats, but hard experience teaches us to expect the patrician frigidity of T.S. Eliot, the agrarian acidity of Walter Berry, or something in between. Poets prosifying: One suspects a certain lack of humor, a remoteness, a pretentiousness. Not every poet could overcome such expectations to produce a minor classic, but in Walking Light Dunn displays ample wit and intelligence, and above all his deep understanding of how poetry works and why it matters.

Walking Light is a remarkably insightful and engrossing read, and I'll get to what's good about it in a moment. Before I do, I'd like to explain why, in addition to merely being a "good book", it serves the unusual, additional function of being a terrific introduction to -- almost a survey of -- contemporary poetry for anyone new to the territory. In order for poetry to become -- not "more popular", but let's just say more vital a presence in our everyday lives -- we can posit at least one important condition.

To wit: It would be necessary for more people to know about the most prominent writers of contemporary poetry. Normally, when reading a new poem, there's little context, just a title and a name. The newcomer demands: Is this person a star? a maverick? a newcomer? These are reasonable questions. Fortunately, most of the essays in Walking Light feature at least one or two liberal excerpts of verse from contemporary poets (most of whom I hadn't read) such as William Carpenter, Marge Piercy, William Meredith (Dunn takes the title of his book from Meredith's "Crossing Over", cited more than once within), Tadeusz Rozewicz, William Bronk, Donald Lawder. A small percentage of the excerpts are perhaps not quite as delightful or accessible as Dunn believes, but the effect on the reader is an accumulation of new names to assimilate for further research. While falling short of a thorough rendering of the poetic landscape, this overview is nevertheless a boon.

As the book's subtitle suggests, many of the essays are autobiographical, and in these pieces we learn that Dunn grew up in New York City, and later lived in Minnesota and elsewhere in the Midwest. As a result, Dunn's voice manages to be simultaneously urban and rural, which I think is crucial in understanding why these essays (and, I'd bet, his poems as well) succeed. Too many urbanites write as if country people comprise an enemy camp, and vice versa (viz. Eliot and Berry), and merely by encompassing both Dunn turns each essay into a fleeting coalition (or cease-fire) in which both realms are treated as approximate equals.

As a teacher of composition, Dunn is particularly acute on the manifold attributes that separate good or great poetry from the narcissistic or polemical attempts that fall short. While this contrast is an undercurrent in many of the essays, a handful, including "The Poet as Teacher: Vices and Virtues" and "Experience, Imagination, and the Poet as Fictionist", are explicitly about this very subject. The essays in which Dunn focuses his energies on such matters are without exception the finest and most urgent essays in the collection. From "Experience, Imagination, and the Poet as Fictionist":

"In my experience with fledgling students young and old, the heartfelt subject often precludes the use of the imagination. The experience feels so large, so self-evidently what it is, that they tend to think like transcribers rather than makers. Behind this is a second misconception, which many poets share: that others are interested in our woes and joys. They're not of course, though they may be if our language is fresh, our attitudes surprising. We need to be interested in more than ourselves. We need to enlarge our sense of what can constitute the personal so that it includes the kindred and alien experiences of our fellow humans -- everything we've read about, observed, or overheard that impinges on us -- not to mention our daily engagement with the less-than-visible, half-known world that we vaguely apprehend. In short, all that is not ours until we've found words to make it ours."

-- Martin Schneider is a writer and editor living in New York City. His writing has appeared in Brill's Content magazine, and on the websites Feed, Citysearch and Savoy.

BOA Editions, Ltd. is an independent, not-for-profit poetry publishing house that has received national acclaim for its books. Established in 1976 and incorporated in 1982 by poet, critic and editor A. Poulin, Jr. in an attempt to make a difference to the life of poetry and to make a contribution to literary history, BOA has consistently published distinguished American poetry and poetry in translation.

BOA's official mission is "to foster readership and appreciation of this essential art. By identifying, cultivating and publishing both new and established poets, BOA brings high quality poetry to the public. Support for this effort comes from the sale of its publications, grant funding and private donations." They accomplish this charge through four distinct venues for poetry: American Poets Continuum Series, A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series, New American Translations Series, BOA Pamphlets Series, and BOA's new prose by poets venue -- The American Reader Series.