a general consideration of the clarity of the book as a whole
--not certainly on his lack of importance as a poet.

There is one further justification for limiting the list of
poets dealt with in detail Most of the modern poets
treated herein are regarded as being excessively difficult.
This study provides, I hope, some sort of explanation for
that "difficulty." But the best defense against the charge
of unintelligibility is to submit detailed interpretations; and
detailed explanations of this sort allow for concentration on
relatively few poets.

Readers acquainted with modern criticism will find
obvious the extent to which I have borrowed from Eliot,
Tate, Empson, Yeats, Ransom, Blackmur, Richards, and
other critics. A special acknowledgement is, therefore,
hardly called for here; and such credit as I may legitimately
claim, I must claim primarily on the grounds of having pos-
sibly made a successful synthesis of other men's ideas rather
than on the originality of my own. By the same token, I
must take responsibility for what are perhaps unjustified ex-
tensions and applications of their ideas.

Some further acknowledgement, however, remains to be
made to a number of friends whose help is not indicated
specifically in the text, and who, save for mention here,
would be otherwise unacknowledged. I mention particu-
larly Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, friends and
colleagues; and I should add to these the names of three
of my students, Leonard Unger, Leslie McKenzie, and
Morgan Blum.

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