SOURCE: "Summer Birds and Haunch of Winter," in Poetry, Vol. CXXXV, No. 4, January, 1980, pp. 229-37.

In the following excerpt, Stitt argues that Praise illustrates the development of the American poem in terms of organic structure and ingenuity.

In Praise, Robert Hass combines rather radically two complementary trends present in the progress of American poetry since the nineteenth century. In terms of imagery and statement, he is willing to include anything demanded by the poem, no matter its source, no matter how subtle or tenuous its relevance. In terms of structure, he is carrying the idea of the organic poem to ever-increasing degrees of linearity. The idea of a well-made poem generally includes the concept of circularity; all is preconceived, blue-printed, nothing enters by happenstance; the end refers to the beginning, all questions are answered, nothing is left dangling, a circle is formed. The organic poem, by contrast, grows...