In the following review-interview, McGinley discusses her publishing success.

In her gracious living room in suburban Larchmont, N.Y., Phyllis McGinley, seated on a Louis XV sofa, a bowl of roses lighting up the coffee table in front of her, fingered a copy of her latest collection of verse, Times Three. "I think it's a lovely book," she said. "I mean the way it's designed. It looks very good. I just love my publisher."

Miss McGinley's publisher loves her, too: The collection before this one, The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley, has sold an astounding (for poetry) 40,000 copies since it first appeared six years ago, and Times Three, covering three decades, has just been chosen as an alternate by the Book-of-the- Month Club for November.

"I think it's a very hopeful thing," said Miss McGinley, "not for me but for all poets. At least the public is...