Auping, Michael, ed., Philip Guston: Retrospective, Thames & Hudson, 2003.

Providing images and analyses of Guston's work throughout his long career, including high-quality reproductions of his paintings, this comprehensive volume will help the reader place Guston's Allegory in its artistic context.

Bang, Mary Jo, ed., Whatever You Desire: A Book of Lesbian Poetry, Oscars Press, 1990.

The collection of poetry about lesbian themes that Bang edited in 1990 provides a useful background to some of the twentieth-century women authors by whom Bang is influenced.

Heffernan, James A. W., Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery, University of Chicago Press, 2004.

In this study of the convention of ekphrasis throughout the history of Western literature, Heffernan pays particular attention to how and why poetic methods of capturing the visual have developed and changed.

Kirby, David, “Give Me Rapture and Bliss,” in New York Times Book Review, March...