Rosmarie Waldrop's contribution to post-1945 American poetry is formidable. The author of ten books of poetry, numerous chapbooks, and two novels, Waldrop is also an award-winning translator (most notably of Edmond Jabès's work) and, along with her husband, Keith Waldrop, the publisher of one of the most persistently adventurous of America's independent presses, Burning Deck, now in its third decade of operation. Her work has received international recognition, especially in France and Germany, and is increasingly discussed in this country both in the context of the contemporary avant-garde and also in the context of feminist writing, where her name is often linked to those of Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Barbara Guest, Leslie Scalapino, and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

Making her achievement perhaps the more remarkable is the fact that English is Waldrop's adopted language and the United States her adopted home. In "Alarms and Excursions," a 1990 essay that...