Twenty essays--half by eminent American poets writing about their literary engagement with H.D. and half by critics writing about H.D. in relation to these same poets--provide a fruitful exchange of perceptions and interpretations. The dialogue between these two perspectives--the first autobiographical testimony and the second critical analysis by scholars attuned to both modern and contemporary poetries and poetics--calls into question both traditional notions of literary criticism and earlier theories of literary influence.
The volume includes a range of contemporary responses to H.D.'s work--from Alicia Ostriker's radical eroticism to Brenda Hillman's epistemological restlessness to Carolyn Forch's response to moral disasters of the century. H.D. and Poets After demonstrates key aspects of the poet's continuing importance as a "poet's poet" in the best sense.
