Blevins is a poet and essayist who has taught at Hollins University, Sweet Briar College, and in the Virginia Community College system. She has published poems, stories, and essays in many magazines, journals, and anthologies. In this essay, Blevins views Andrew Hudgins's poem through a lens of what Donald Hall calls an "ethic of clarity."

In "Risk and Contemporary Poetry," Andrew Hudgins measures the success of eight volumes of poetry by focusing on what he calls "the risks of content," saying that "it is content that gives significance to form, that justifies form, and makes form worth looking at to see how it contributes to meaning." He also says that "like any performer the writer to some extent, large or small, puts himself or herself in jeopardy: a feat is worth praising only if it runs the risk of failure too." Since it truly is a small...