Jonathan N. Barron is associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has co-edited Jewish American Poetry (forthcoming from University Press of New England), Robert Frost at the Millennium (forthcoming from University of Missouri Press) as well as a forthcoming collection of essays on the poetic movement, New Formalism. Beginning in 2001, he will be the editor-in-chief of The Robert Frost Review.

In a powerful defense of poetry's nobility, the contemporary American poet, Mary Oliver, wrote: "No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to praise littleness of soul. Not one. Not ever." To demonstrate the truth of Oliver's views, one need look no further than Galway Kinnell's marvelous and poignant poem, "Saint Francis and the Sow," from his 1980 collection Mortal...