Hayden Carruth has been an important figure in American poetry since the late 1940s. His numerous collections of verse certainly identify him as one of the country's most prolific writers, and James Wright calls him "one of the finest poets now at work in the United States." The Voice that is Great Within Us (1970), an anthology edited by Carruth, is standard fare in university poetry courses, and his reviews and criticism, outspoken and tough, are important documents for those attempting to evaluate America's major twentieth-century poets.

Carruth was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Gorton Veeder Carruth, a newspaper editor, and Margery Barrow Carruth. In 1943 he received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and in 1947 he took an M.A. from the University of Chicago. He served for two years during World War II in the U.S. Army Air Corps, leaving the...