My Business Is Circumference - Poets on Influence & Mastery (Paperback, 1st ed)

Twenty-eight distinguished contemporary American poets provide a multifaceted view of the creative process. Each poet has contributed a poem and chosen several poems by other poets that have influenced it. In an essay, each poet then describes how those influences have led to a sense of poetic mastery.

The Contributors: A.R. Ammons L.S. Asekoff Stephanie Brown Hayden Carruth Gillian Conoley Amy Gerstler Judith Hall Hunt Hawkins Jane Hirshfield Claudia Keelan Yusef Komunyakaa Lisa Lewis Dana Levin Laurence Lieberman Thomas Lux Jane Mead Jack Myers Donald Revell Len Roberts Michael Ryan Ira Sadoff Hugh Seidman Jennifer Snyder Gerald Stern Lucien Stryk Karen Volkman Ted Weiss Joe Wenderoth

"Anyone interested in how language calls to language, and heart to heart, will find these pages irresistible." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"In this quirky, resonant, and necessary book, generously edited by Stephen Berg, a wide range of American poets at all stages of their writing lives offer their poems and choose their precursors, meditating with great humility and insight on the dual mysteries of influence and mastery, on the reading that fosters writing, on the shimmering nobility of poetry itself." --Edward Hirsch, Author of "How to Read a Poem"