SOURCE: "'I Have Made This Song': Hayden Carruth's Poetry and Criticism," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. XCIII, No. 1, Winter, 1985, pp. 149-57

In the following essay, Swiss surveys several of Carruth's collections of poetry and criticism and lauds the author for his technical skill and his earnest and straightforward approach in both genres.

Hayden Carruth is one of our most enduring writers; at sixty-three he continues to be prolific. Two collections of criticism, two full-length volumes of poetry, and a handsome small-press chapbook have all been published in the last two years. Even as I prepared to write about this recent work, a half-dozen new essays and poems appeared in the pages of some of our most respected magazines and literary journals.

In some quarters Carruth may be better known as a critic than as a poet. No doubt this situation is unavoidable in what remains—in Jarrell's phrase...