Peter Cooley writes poetry that possesses the rare quality of being personal without being impenetrably private. Though he draws upon the various elements of his background to write a poetry in which he unavoidably collides with himself, Cooley confesses that he is always "in the company of strangers, myself" (title poem, The Company of Strangers, 1975). Cooley's reliance on personal experience for subject matter, or perhaps the self-imposed requirement that he make sense of his life in his writing, has led many critics to view him as a confessional poet. But Cooley has made every effort, especially in recent books, to direct his pursuit of self-knowledge outward, relieving himself of the burden of self-consciousness that makes a poem private and one-dimensional rather than personal and mysterious. He has been more successful in recent years at writing such personal poems than in his early writings.

Peter John Cooley was born...