In various ways, and in a utilitarian cultural context that is not very receptive to poetry, a number of American poets have urged us to depart from a scripted, socially approved life—one defined by the dominant culture—and instead to follow a path of authenticity, one that resonates with who we really are, or imagines what we could be. The list of poets included in this book is both personal and very selective, chosen because at various points in my life they spoke to me in ways that shifted that life in what I now, in my twilight years, can see was the right direction. They were, in other words, soul-changers. I was only sixteen when T.S. Eliot taught me that I mustn’t measure out my life in coffee spoons; much later, Mary Oliver urged me to take the world in my arms, and not to spend my life just visiting it. These blessings I wish for all my readers, should they wish to have them.

Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written twenty-one books and nearly 200 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, and Mexico. He won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.