In Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (1986) editors Philip Dacey and David Jauss provide an overview of the continuing presence of formal poetry in contemporary writing. Strong Measures brought Dacey and his own poetry a wider audience but also led many readers to identify Dacey as a supporter of formalism over free verse, in one of contemporary poetry's most heated critical battles. While Dacey has written poems in traditional forms (some of which appear in Strong Measures), he has also continued to compose much of his best work in free verse. A careful study of the range of Dacey's work will show that, rather than being one who dogmatically argues for a return to formalism, he is a poet who explores the variety of methods available to him in order to communicate best the concerns driving him to write.

Philip Dacey was born on 9 May 1939 in...