One of the founders of the New Narrative movement in contemporary poetry, Robert McDowell has been one of its most devoted practitioners, telling stories in both free and formal verse about ordinary Americans in extraordinary circumstances. When his book of narrative poems, Quiet Money, appeared in 1987, it was hailed, by Louis Simpson and other critics, as a sign that poetry was leaving the academy. It also represented one of the first major achievements of the return to storytelling in American poetry. Eight years later, with the publication of his book-length poem, The Diviners, written in blank verse, McDowell's poetry showed the coming together of the New Narrative and New Formalist movements, while still focusing on the unpoetic lives of Americans who work for a living. Since then, his poetry has taken a turn toward the lyric, especially the formal lyric, such as the sonnet. Although this turn appears...