SOURCE: "Chants and Chain Saws," in The New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1992, p. 2.

Tillinghast is an American poet, educator, and critic. In the following excerpt from a review of Collected Shorter Poems, 1946–1991, he asserts: "Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any living writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company."

Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, 1946–1991 brings together in 417 pages what the author describes as "about two-thirds of my previously published shorter poems and perhaps one-fifth or less of all the poems I've written." Mr. Carruth is prolific. He revels in a capacity for writing in a wide range of styles and forms. Like other poets who came of age during the 50's, he started off imitating the formal style of the day, with its tendency toward a stiff, severe rhetoric:

         Stern and alone, I may...