Robert Pinsky is a balanced critic, and furthermore he knows that merely avoiding the dangers of partisanship or scrupulosity can produce a limply, or even glibly, enervated criticism. Bored good will cannot provide a very satisfactory antidote for the failures of extremism.

One way Pinsky avoids extreme partisanship, intentionally or not, is by dealing with themes, motives, and styles [in The Situation of Poetry: Contemporary Poetry and Its Traditions], rather than by discussing single poets in the overall reaches of their careers. Supplementing this approach, however, Pinsky has his favorites…. On the other hand, he manages not to be blinded by his scruples, since he uses the Romantic poets and their traditions as enlivening originators of "problems." He argues, for instance, that an "uneasy relation with one's own medium has led Romantic and post-Romantic poets to devise remarkable ways of writing, which might make language seem less abstract...