SOURCE: "Impetus and Invention: Poetic Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Harper's, Vol. 258, No. 1548, May, 1979, pp. 88-90.

In the following excerpt, Carruth reviews Praise favorably and includes Hass among the many individual talents "inventing" poetry today.

When we open a book at random and read this:

 Ah, love, this is fear. This is fear and syllables
and the beginnings of beauty. We have walked the city,
a flayed animal signifying death, a hybrid god
who sings in the desolation of filth and money
a song the heart is heavy to receive. We mourn
otherwise. Otherwise the ranked monochromes,
the death-teeth of that horizon, survive us
as we survive pleasure. What a small hope.
What a fierce small privacy of consolation.
What a dazzle of petals for the poor meat … 

we have found a poet who knows, loves, and uses the great tradition, knowing, too, that it is never...