Louise Gluck, Sandra McPherson, Michael Palmer, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and Kay Ryan Summary

Louise Gluck currently works as a professor. Her powerful and painful works are autobiographical. She analyzes the power of the forces that exist in life. They ask difficult questions with a dark, almost unearthly tone. She has won many awards. The poems included in her section are "Messengers," "The Drowned Children," "The Garden," "Palais des Arts," "Mock Orange," and "Eros."

Sandra McPherson has taught at several universities. Her poems are visions of reality in the dark, as if these real things could create light on their own. She has a powerful imagination and is not embarrassed by sentiment and feelings of affection. Her poetic speech is both real and elegant. The poems included in her section are "Black Soap," "The Microscope...